Colossians 1:17: He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Pastor Sumpter has said it all: Jesus is enough. If you have Jesus, you have everything you could ever want, more than you could ever need. If you have Jesus, you have knowledge of the will of God and spiritual wisdom. You are able to walk in a manner pleasing to the Lord; you are made fruitful. If you have Jesus, you become steadfast and patient,... Read more
Colossians 1:13: He delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son. When Jesus was baptized, the Father spoke from heaven: “This is My beloved Son.” Paul refers to that event here when he describes salvation as a transfer from the authority of darkness to the kingdom of the beloved Son, that is, the baptized Son. Baptism marks and effects that transition. By baptism, the Father declares that He loves you too,... Read more
“It was the Father’s good pleasure for the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things,” Paul writes in our sermon text. The Father sends the Son to renew all things because it pleases Him to do so. Nothing forces the Father. He doesn’t have to conform to any logic or necessity. The Father does what He does because He delights in His Son, and the Son does His Father’s will because He is filled with... Read more
Near the beginning of On the Incarnation: Saint Athanasius (Popular Patrictics Series) , Athanasius reviews various theories concerning the origin of the world. It cannot be the case that matter existed eternally, since that would be a limit on God. It also cannot be the case that the world is self-organized, as the Epicureans believed. If it were, Athanasius says, there would be no distinctions among things: “If things had come into being in this automatic fashion, instead of being... Read more
“Traditional societies are far more diverse in many of their cultural practices than are modern industrial societies,” writes Jared Diamond in his recent The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? . Modern societies are outliers on the spectrum. So it’s rather weird that “psychologists base most of their generalizations about human nature on studies of our own narrow and atypical slice of human diversity. Among the human subjects studied in a sample of papers from the... Read more
Esau is the original hairy ( se’ar ) man of the Bible (Genesis 25:25), and the reputation goes with the Edomites, his descendants, who live at Mount Shaggy (Seir; Genesis 14:6; 32:3; 33:14; etc.). He’s not the last hairy man. Nazirites are hairy (Numbers 6:5, 18; Judges 16:22), including the counterfeit Nazirite Absalom (2 Kings 1:8). Prophets are hairy too. Elijah is called a lord of hair ( ba’al se’ar ; 2 Kings 1:8); as prophet, he is like the... Read more
We are nearly ready to send out the first edition of our Trinity House email newsletter, In Medias Res . In the first issue, we give updates about Trinity House, I discuss the church’s response to gay marriage, and James Jordan translates and comments on Psalm 62. Sign up at www.trinityhouseinstitute.com . Read more
James Jordan points out that the two witnesses correspond to two cities and to two forms of judgment (Revelation 11). One weapon of the witnesses is fire, and this corresponds to Sodom, destroyed by fire (vv. 5, 8). Another weapon is turning water to blood and bringing plagues, and this corresponds to Egypt (vv. 6, 8). The first is an Elijah judgment, the second a Moses judgment; the first is royal, the second priestly. Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed by... Read more
Through Jeremiah, Yahweh instructs the Chaldeans to “go through [Judah’s] vine rows and destroy. Take away her tendrils, for they are not Yahweh’s” (Jeremiah 5:10). In his discourse on the vine in John 15, Jesus says something similar: The Father cute off the branches that do not bear fruit and throws them into the fire. In Jeremiah, the image has a political edge: Cutting off branches is what Judah’s enemies do. Perhaps Jesus implies the same: Unfruitful branches will be... Read more
Peter Leithart is one of those bright and creative voices that we all ought to be listening to. I find that he seeks to do justice both to the Christian tradition and to helpful moves in contemporary thought. I always learn something when I read his work, and that is true even when I am not sure I fully agree — which speaks loudly of his scholarship, thoughtfulness, and worthy contribution. C. John Collins, Professor of Old Testament, Covenant Theological... Read more
Leithart
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