Consider the birds, Jesus said. And the lilies. Solomon had: “How beautiful you are, my darling, how beautiful you are! Your eyes are doves” and “Like a lily among the thorns, so is my darling among the daughters.” Jesus assures us that our Father feeds and clothes us. He might have said, following Solomon, that He does the same, since He is the perfect Bridegroom (cf. Exodus 21:10). Read more
Hegel wants to rebut the Enlightenment dismissal of Christianity. He doesn’t do this by reaching back to pre-critical forms of faith, but by ingesting criticism, deconstructing traditional theology, and reconstructing what he claims is a purer form of faith. Rowan Williams captures the reconstructive process very concisely: “from the fundamental analysis of mental life as relatedness, we are led first to understand what ‘God’ means, as the guarantor of the thinkable (reconcilable) nature of our world; and thence to the... Read more
It is not good for man to be alone. Hegel says, It is impossible. “I have my self-consciousness not in myself but in the other. I am satisfied and have peace with myself only in this other – and I am only because I have peace with myself; if I did not have it, then I would be a contradiction that falls to pieces. This other, because it likewise exists outside itself, has its self-consciousness only in me, and both... Read more
Summarizing “logic and spirit” in Hegel, Rowan Williams describes the pressure toward relationality that is inherent in any act of thought: “We think in relation to particulars; but we cannot, quite strictly cannot, think particulars simply as particulars, because we can’t concretely think a pure self-identity. To think a particular is to think ‘this, not that; here, not there; now, not then’: to map it on a conceptual surface by way of exclusions or negations, yet in that act to... Read more
1 Peter 2:12: Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may on account of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation. As Pastor Sumpter has reminded us today, God visits us in many ways. Whenever He visits, God comes to judge, to condemn His enemies and to deliver His people. (more…) Read more
John 20:21-22: So Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you. And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. In Scripture, water is often a boundary. Israel exited the land of Egypt by going through the Red Sea, and at the end of their journey they entered the land by crossing a river. The Jordan river was the boundary... Read more
“Abstain from fleshly lusts,” Peter says in this morning’s sermon text, “which war against the soul.” It sounds as if Peter is saying that our bodies are evil, but that’s not what he means. (more…) Read more
A funny thing happened on the way to mapping the genome, says James Le Fanu ( Why Us?: How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves ). Humans have 25,000 genes. That’s enough to get the job done, of course, but scientists were surprised to discover so few. To transform an egg into a baby, those genes have to “multi-task.” That’s just the beginning of sorrows. A fly has 17,000 genes, and so do tiny worms. Why are the numbers so... Read more
Athanasius’ treatment of Proverbs 8 is not convincing as exegesis, but as a piece of theology it is brilliant. When Proverbs says that God “made” and “created” His Wisdom (in the LXX), it doesn’t refer, Athanasius says, to His nature but to His incarnation. The Son of God is created as Son of Man. That’s incarnation with a capital I. The eternal Son enters time; the sovereign Lord becomes servant; God the Son becomes man. And, Athanasius says, the Creator... Read more
Athansius of course thinks the Arians are wrong because the Son is eternal. But one of his more intriguing, and satisfying, arguments is based on the biblical notion that the Son is the one through whom the “ages” came into being (Hebrews 1:2). Athanasius says, “every interval in the ages is measured [by Him], and of all the ages the Word is King and Maker, therefore no interval at all exists prior to Him.” Since the Son is the measure of all... Read more
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