Year: 2009
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Gustaf Aulén, Lundensian Theologian
Gustaf Aulén (born this day, May 15, 1879; died 1977) was the Lutheran bishop of Strängnäs, Sweden, and the leading figure in a loosely-defined movement within twentieth-century theology called the Lundensian Theology. The other major figures in the movement were Anders Nygren, Ragnar Bring, and, at a distance, Regin Prenter. The label Lundensian, which is…
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Why Protestants Should Read Thomas Aquinas (3: Skill in Reasoning)
Here is the third benefit of studying Thomas Aquinas (see also benefits one and two): He can help you become skillful in reasoning. No matter what you read by him, and no matter where you start reading, as long as you reel off a few pages and pay attention to them, you will see a…
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Timothy Dwight of Yale
Timothy Dwight (born this day, May 14, 1752; died in 1817) became the President of Yale at a time in American higher education when skepticism was becoming cool, and all the young men of the nation who had spent a few months on a college campus expected each other to be outgrowing the colonial faith…
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Why Protestants Should Read Thomas Aquinas (2: Faith and Reason)
A second benefit of reading Thomas Aquinas (see my previous post for the first benefit) is that Thomas Aquinas knew how to use both faith and reason. Thinking Christians need to know how to do this. When people first read Thomas, some people consider him a rationalist (he can prove God’s existence using pure reason!),…
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The Pirates of Praise-ance?
His name has to be paired with Gilbert before most people will recognize him, because he is best known as the composer of the music for those Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas like Mikado, H. M. S. Pinafore, and Pirates of Penzance. But Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan (born this day, May 13, 1842; died 1900)…
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Why Protestants Should Read Thomas Aquinas (1: The Myth of the Dark Ages)
This week I spoke for Saint Augustine Classical Academy’s Spring Speaker series on the topic, “Why Protestants Should Read Thomas Aquinas,” with the alternate title, “The Myth of the Dark Ages.” I shared with the parents and administrators there that there are four benefits for evangelical Protestants reading Aquinas. Here is the first benefit. 1.…
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Carey’s Enquiry, May 12, 1792
It had one of those classic self-expositing eighteenth-century titles: “An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens,” and tacked onto that was an even more elaborate sub-title: “in which the Religious State of the Different Nations of the World, the Success of Former Undertakings, and the Practicability…
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Want Your Carnal Nature Removed? Too Bad
“What is meant by those who say that after their conversion they had an up and down experience, and then came a second time and that they had the carnal nature, inbred sin or sin principle taken out?” Doubtless what they mean is that when they first accepted Christ, they did not fully surrender to…
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What Matteo Ricci Tried to Do
Matteo Ricci was the pioneer Jesuit missionary to China. He was born in 1552 and died on this day, May 11, in 1610. Ricci had to carry out his mission by making his way very delicately between two titanic forces: the imperial court of China, and the counter-Reformation papacy. Ricci respected the high culture of…
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Happy Birthday Karl Barth
Karl Barth (born May 10, 1886, died 1968) was the greatest theologian of the 20th century. His work made certain kinds of liberalism impossible, got modern thinkers to take revelation seriously, and put the Trinity back in the center of Christian theology. From an evangelical perspective, he seems unreliable on crucial issues related to epistemology…
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Why Karl Barth is Hard to Read
I would gladly argue that Karl Barth’s writing is worth the hard labor it takes to get into, but it just needs to be said right up front that he makes some serious demands on his readers. Back in college, I was halfway through my third book by this author before things started to make…
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Some Sound Bites from Barth
Karl Barth wrote some sentences that run on for about a half-page, circle around their main idea without ever quite stating it, and keep readers on the edge of their seats with a sense of dramatic suspense and tension. But he also wrote quotable bits. Here are some I noticed during a recent re-read of…