Category: Blog
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The (trinitarian) Method of Grace
Grace is trinitarian: not only because it is the grace of God who is the Trinity, but also because it works in a correspondingly trinitarian way. God’s method of being gracious is to be toward us what he is in himself: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This strikes some Christians as a new idea these…
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Psalm 36:10, by Isaac Watts
Isaac Watts versifies the lines, “with you is the fountain of life; in your light shall we see light:” Life, like a fountain rich and free, Springs from the presence of the Lord; And in thy light our souls shall see The glories promised in thy word.
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Unspeakable Patriarchy
In a class on Chaucer yesterday, a group of Torrey sophomores (hi, Lewis group!) examined Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales with an eye on the theme of marriage. Chaucer scholars disagree about the order and coherence of the Tales, but only a pretty obtuse reader would miss the fact that these Canterbury pilgrims are having an extended…
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Psalm 36: In Your Light, Light.
Psalm 36:9, “With you is the fountain of life; In your light do we see light,” is a strange line. I looked it up in three books: a modern commentary, a summary of medieval Christian commentaries, and the medieval midrash on the Psalms. A modern critical commentary: Peter C. Craigie, in volume 19 of the…
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Lamb-Griffin!!!
An especially spirited rendering of a mythological beast, or, in Freddy’s words, “something God did not make.” Click to enlarge.
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“Boece” by Theseus and Chanticleer
Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1343-1400) loved Boethius (480-524). Not only did Chaucer make a complete translation of “Boece’s Concolacione Philosophie,” he cited Boethius frequently. Partly to prove he was a learned man, Chaucer would haul out a few lines of Boethius anytime he needed a character to say something philosophical. So it’s no surprise that at…
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The Trinity between OT and NT
In the fullness of time, the one God revealed that he eternally exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the doctrine of the Trinity is a biblical doctrine. But if you ask where the Trinity is clearly declared in scripture, you should take care to avoid certain common errors. One error is to dive…
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Fraught: Chaucer’s Mediocrism
To ask about Chaucer’s religion is a little thickheaded, because the main thing about Chaucer is his distance from religion. He’s important in the history of English lit partly because he’s “the first great secular poet in English,” and if we wanted to read religious literature from the 14th century, we could go read that…
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Lear at the High Table
Last Friday I had the chance to get together with the other profs in my department, including adjuncts and a few teachers from Torrey Academy, and talk about King Lear for three hours. We call these meetings “High Table” meetings, because in them we do exactly what our students do, with the same texts for…
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Mysteries of the Life of Christ (A good idea is a good idea)
When a theologian comes up with a way of structuring the presentation of Christian doctrine, sometimes it just catches on and gets used by theologians of very different traditions. Take as an example John Calvin’s way of describing Christ’s work as the mediator: reflecting on “Christ” as “the anointed one,” Calvin asked, “what kind of…
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100 Year Old Evangelicalism
The Washington Post ran a story recently about Rick Warren, bestselling megachurch superpastor. What caught my ear was one of the Warren lines quoted in the piece: “One of my goals is to take evangelicals back a century, to the 19th century,” said Warren … “That was a time of muscular Christianity that cared about…
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Amanda Smith Gets the Trinity
Evangelicals have long wrestled with the problem of having the doctrine of the Trinity functioning in their lives as an intellectual problem rather than as the confession of an experienced reality (see previous posts on Bunyan and Watts). This tension has come to expression repeatedly in the devotional life of evangelicals. As I have scanned…