Category: Theology

Advice to anybody who wants to think well about theology: Find a holy person and watch them closely. Good theologians are good saint-watchers. They pay attention to the believers they know, and devote time to describing what they see taking place in the lives of the people around them who are conspicuously Christ-like. They should…

John Wesley, who everybody’s heard of, had this to say about John Fletcher of Madeley, who is now mostly forgotten: “An obedience discovered itself in Fletcher of Madeley, which I wish I could describe or imitate.” John William Fletcher (1729-1785), or, to use the French name he was given at birth, Jean Guillaume de la…

Jesus is God, but did he know during his earthly ministry that he was God? Was he, as a human, aware of his divinity? I think it is necessary, for biblical and logical reasons, to answer yes to this question, but I freely admit that doing so raises further difficult questions and forces us to…

Henri Rossier, a nineteenth century Plymouth Brethren writer, begins his Meditations on the Book of Joshua with an arresting comparison: The Book of Joshua gives us, in type, the subject of the Epistle to the Ephesians. The journey across the desert had come to an end, and the children of Israel had now to cross…

Trapped in a world that has no meaning? Wondering what to do with your time if there’s no point to it all? Eking out a futile existence on the shreds and shards of disappointment and despair? Well, there’s no need to re-invent the wheel (why add inefficiency to futility?) Here are the five most popular…

So began a session yesterday on the book of Job in the Torrey Honors Institute. The question, posed by myself and my colleague Matt Jenson, was intended to start a discussion on Job’s interactions with his friends, especially Elihu. It may seem like an odd, off the mark question given that Job was “blameless and…

As a teacher and writer, I am constantly juggling, examining, ducking, burying, testing and launching words. Day and night, I read and talk and write. I seldom escape the weighing of my words for timing, accuracy and fit. I love this word-riddled life, this chance to mimic the One whose mere saying something makes it…

Jesus is God, but did he know during his earthly ministry that he was God? Was he, as a human, aware of his divinity? I think it is necessary, for biblical and logical reasons, to answer yes to this question, but I freely admit that doing so raises further difficult questions and forces us to…

We should pay more attention to the doctrine of divine blessedness. I have been pondering it lately, noticing it everywhere in older theological writing, and wondering how to give this great doctrine more weight and emphasis. Beatitude, blessedness, is a divine attribute. It is a perfection of God’s being. Blessedness has occupied an ambiguous place…

Richard Rogers (1550-1618) was a Puritan pastor who noticed that people had lots of questions about how to live the Christian life. They asked very detailed and specific questions, but none of the devotional books available in his time gave correspondingly detailed answers. There were a few Roman Catholic books that got down to specifics,…