Month: April 2009
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Co-Everything
When Paul wants to describe salvation, he tells what happened to Jesus, and then annexes believers to that. We died with Christ, were raised with Christ, and are alive together in Christ. Paul even found the shortest possible way of making this point: By taking the main verbs of the story of Jesus and putting…
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Today Fred Sanders was Born (1968)
Fred Sanders (1968– ) is an American evangelical theologian known for his work on the doctrine of the Trinity and his Christian comic book series. (Seriously.) Raised in Kentucky, Sanders polymathically found his way into any number of intellectual huddles in the early part of his career. He began his formal post-secondary education training as…
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William Booth’s Army of Salvation
William Booth (born today, April 10, 1829; died 1912) came out of nowhere, or out of “darkest England” as he called it, and did more good in one lifetime than could reasonably be expected from one man, even a man with so remarkable a wife as his Catherine. In 1890 Henry Morton Stanley thrilled England…
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No One Takes My Life From Me; I Have Authority to Lay it Down
This is one of my favorite images of Christ and the cross. It is not a historically accurate photo of what happened on Good Friday. Jesus didn’t climb a ladder to get onto the cross. But this image tells that Jesus was the active one, the agent, in the atonement that took place between God…
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The Martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: April 9, 1945
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (born 1906) was executed on this day, April 9, in 1945. He had been involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler, and was hanged for that political action. He was plotting murder and got caught; there were non-Christians undertaking the same action. His death is hardly the stuff of straightforward martyrdom, hardly as…
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God Keep Thee, Freddy, In the World
My Freddy, when I look on thee, So pure, so guileless, and so gay, With sunny smile and eye of blue, Clear as the blushing dawn of day — I think how lovely is the trust Which God to man has largely given; So beauteous is the fallen dust, With yet within a spark from…
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Cast Away (F. B. Meyer)
“If I had a hundred lives, they should be at Christ’s disposal,” said F. B. Meyer (born today, April 8, 1847; died 1929), a great Baptist minister who flourished about a century ago. Bob Holman has just published (and I have not yet read) a biography of Meyer, taking that statement as its subtitle: F.B.…
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The Battle for Accuracy: Revised v. Authorized Version
Question: Which is the more accurate translation of 2 Timothy 3:16, that of the Authorized Version, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,” or that of the Revised Version, “Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof,…
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C. H. Dodd and Realized Eschatology
C. H. Dodd (born this day, April 7, 1884; died 1973) was a major twentieth-century New Testament scholar. He wrote on many topics, but his name is mostly associated with the idea of realized eschatology. If eschatology is the doctrine of the final things (eschaton being the Greek word for “last”), then realized eschatology is…
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Albrecht Dürer, Northern Renaissance Man
Albrecht Dürer (born 1471, died on this day, April 6, in 1528) was widely hailed as the greatest artist of his generation in the northern Renaissance. All kinds of voluptuous shenanigans were going on in the wonderful world of the southern Renaissance, but if you want that stern, northern sensibility, it’s hard to beat Dürer…
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Behold Your King: Reflections on a Palm Sunday
Christians remember on Palm Sunday the triumphal entry of Christ to Jerusalem–the King of Glory riding to the ostensible seat of his political and religious power, received as victor and Lord with shouts of Hosannas. But there is a great deal about the scene that–at least as it hits my imagination–speaks of Christ’s humility: riding…
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Gerhard Tersteegen (1697-1769), Pietist
Today is the anniversary of the death of Gerhard Tersteegen (born 1697, died April 3, 1769), the most pious pietist of pietism’s piousness. Somehow, the words “pious” and “pietism” have been turned into dirty words in contemporary usage. I don’t know how that happened to perfectly good words. Maybe where you live, you are suffocating…