Category: Blog
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"Self-Salvation Means Despair:" Moule's Paraphrase of Galatians
H.C.G. Moule was the Bishop of Durham just after the death of Queen Victoria. He wrote wonderful commentaries on many books of the New Testament, but never did a full-length treatment of Galatians. What he did publish was an itty-bitty 60-page devotional book called The Cross and the Spirit: Meditations on the Epistle to the…
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No Trinity Verse: Still a Good Thing
Earlier this year I had a one-page piece about the Trinity in Biola Magazine. My goal was to show that the doctrine of the Trinity is a biblical doctrine, and my hook was to begin by conceding that all the elements of trinitarianism are not all brought together in one verse, and then to show…
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Karl Barth's Methodist Cleaning Service
In a 1958 essay on the future of the Methodist tradition, E. Gordon Rupp insists, with all humility and caution, there there is “something needing to be said” in modern theology and Christian witness, “which our Lutheran, Reformed, Presbyterian, and Anglican friends are not saying.” What he has in mind is the aggressive, culture-transforming edge…
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Galatians Memory Verses
I get to spend the middle part of the summer studying Galatians for a class I’m co-teaching in Cambridge. I don’t have time to undertake a major memorization program (like learning the whole book by heart), but here are the verses I think will be best to commit to memory. I chose these because they…
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Paul: "The Veiled Energy of Metaphor and Allusion"
Richard Hays (from his 2001 intro to the 2nd ed. of Faith of Jesus Christ) gives some great advice on how to read Paul: “Paul, the missionary preacher, is at least as much a poet as he is a theologian.” And Hays doesn’t just mean in the mind-blowing passages like Romans 8 and 1 Corinthians…
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Baptism of Aethelbert
Today (June 2) is the day King Aethelbert of Kent was baptized into the Christian faith by Augustine of Canterbury in the year 597. Bede tells us that Aethelbert “was the third English king to become High-King (Bretwalda) of all the provinces south of the river Humber, but he was the first to enter the…
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What was the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge?
The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge was, and still is, a Bible reference work first published around 1830, created by the London publisher Samuel Bagster (1772-1851). It is a deluxe set of cross-references. That is, the TSK consists entirely of a book-length listing of cross-references, showing only the chapter and verse citations, without any accompanying text.…
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How to Read a Spiritual Book (Wesley)
In 1735, John Wesley published an abridgment of Thomas a Kempis’ classic 1441 book The Imitation of Christ. Wesley’s edition was called The Christian’s Pattern. By way of introduction, Wesley gave his readers a short set of directions “concerning the manner of reading this (or any other) religious treatise.” The instructions were not quite of…
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Passion and Resurrection: Reflections on the Death of a Friendship and the Death of a Friend
(I wrote this piece a year ago, and since then, there has been a reconciliation with the friend in question, though this friend lives now a half a world away. I publish it as it is) there hath pass’d away a glory from the earth.-William Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality As I write this piece I…
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Timothy Ward, Words of Life
I can imagine a better book on the doctrine of Scripture, but that’s just because I’m imaginative. I cannot actually find a better book than Timothy Ward’s Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God. This is the best thing out there, the one to use in class, the one to…
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Illuminated Manuscript w/Dragon
The church bulletin featured a photomontage based on Jean-Francois Millet’s 1857 painting The Angelus. But Freddy Age Ten, perhaps influenced by the recent craze for street art, added a little something. The average viewer thinks of this descending dragon as a menacing presence, perhaps as extra motivation to pray harder. Perhaps he is one of…
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Deep Things Roundup
It’s been a couple of months since I posted anything about my book The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything, but the book continues to make the rounds and find new readers. Here are some of the most interesting tidbits from recent times. Check out Crossway’s nifty 90-second trailer for the book:…