Month: April 2006
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St. Hereticus Easter Lesson
The Gospel According to St. Hereticus Scripture Lesson for Easter “St. Hereticus” was Robert McAfee Brown (1920-2001), a good old-fashioned left-leaning American theologian who published a series of satirical jabs under his heretical pseudonym for many years around the middle of the twentieth century. This piece was published in Christianity and Crisis, March 16, 1959.…
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My Love is Crucified
A Charles Wesley stanza from 1742: O Love divine, what has thou done! The immortal God hath died for me! The Father’s coeternal Son bore all my sins upon the tree. Th’ immortal God for me hath died: My Lord, my Love, is crucified! Somewhere around the end of the first century (98? 117?), Ignatius…
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Farrer: How It Is Done
Austin Farrer (1904-1968) wrote a little book called Saving Belief: A Discussion of Essentials, which sparkles with his characteristic good sense and good phrasing. Here is an excerpt appropriate to the day, along with my usual warning to eat the meat and spit out the bones. In the chapter on “Sin and Redemption,” Farrer describes…
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Good Friday to Easter (Robert W. Jenson)
An intriguing discussion of the atonement from Lutheran theologian Robert W. Jenson’s 1997 Systematic Theology, Volume 1. For anyone who’s read Jenson before, it goes without saying that just because I quote him doesn’t mean I endorse his whole project. Who could possibly do that? I read Jenson for the provocation of it, and am…
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Ladder at the Cross
This 14th century painting shows Christ climbing up onto the cross. It is surely historically inaccurate, but it even more surely makes a theological point worth making. It makes the point in a way that I find disarming specifically because of the liberties it takes with history. Jesus didn’t climb a ladder to get his…
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Getting Schooled
There is a growing crisis today with our public school system. Dropout rates are growing at an alarming rate. Academic standards are falling rapidly. Everyone from the Bush Administration to The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are interested in reforming our problematic public high schools. While it is agreed upon by everyone that the rising…
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Beauty of the Trinity
The Trinity is beautiful. By common consent, great is the beauty of holiness. God himself is that beauty than which nothing greater can be desired, to give Anselm’s “maximal being theology” an aesthetic spin. Because God, unlike creatures, is not compounded of separable parts, he does not have a beauty with which to be beautified.…
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The Apology to Diognetus
Sometime in the second century, a Christian apologist (now anonymous) wrote a brief letter, addressed to someone named Diognetus, answering his questions about Christianity. This short letter is one of my favorite writings from the early church. Whoever this second-century apologist was, he has all the best things from Justin Martyr, and almost sounds like…
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Love Sonnet, After Calvin
In 1539 when John Calvin was 30, his friend Farel wrote to him with the suggestion that he had found a woman who would be perfect for Calvin to marry. Calvin wrote back, explaining that he was not especially the marrying type, and that only a certain kind of woman could possibly suit him: “Remember…
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Driven To Distraction
I hate cell phones (I have one) and iPods (I don’t have one). They are true indicators of our fallen world. Modern society seems to be constructed in a way that encourages/enables humans to keep a frenetic schedule at all times. In today’s fast moving world it is nearly impossible to pause long enough for…