Category: Theology
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Golgotha (paper and ink)
This is a little drawing (about six inches square) given to me by Verna Smith, an artist who works in hand-made paper. She must have made it around 1975, but gave it to me thirty years later. Photos don’t quite capture the delicacy and suggestiveness of the paper: we’re so used to thinking of paper…
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Making Marriage: A Wedding Prayer
I prayed this prayer at a wedding in Picayune, Mississippi, March 15, 2008. Almighty God, only you have the power to make a marriage. This special church service cannot do it, though it has been beautiful. Our hopes and wishes for Zak and Martha cannot, though we are their best friends and adoring families. The…
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On Viewing a Body
Frankly, I wondered about the wisdom and place of a viewing. Our church was devastated by the death of Midi and Nathan Mikasa, mother and four-year-old son, less than a year — but such a year — after we opened our doors. I remember my pastor’s call one morning. I had been planning to call…
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Augustine's Two Spiritual Laws
Bill Bright put a simplified account of the gospel into an easily-communicated form called the Four Spiritual Laws. Those laws, as stated in the classic booklet that has been used for so much evangelism, are: 1. God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life. 2. Man is sinful and separated from God.…
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Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective on the "Converse with Scholars" Program
This Thursday (March 6 ’08) I’ll be the guest on the Converse with Scholars web show hosted by Reclaiming the Mind ministries. I’ll be talking with the hosts and the live web audience about my 2007 book, Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective. You’ll be able to listen to the show anytime from their site, but if…
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*Give Your Life to Mani*
Recent Converts! Are You Confused? Does your inquiring mind raise questions the authoritarian church just can’t answer? . *** ASK MANI! *** . He Can Explain True Christianity To You! **************************************** **************************************** **************************************** **************************************** **************************************** **************************************** ALL THAT IS … is light and darkness. But in the beginning, the King of Darkness smelled something desirable…
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Sinning Like Sheep
In Handel’s Messiah, the composer teaches theology through music. It may seem unlikely that Handel himself could be doing any teaching in this composition, since the text of Messiah is entirely composed of Bible verses, and even the choice and arrangement of them was the work of somebody else –the librettist Charles Jennens. How could…
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Biblical Fasting
Fasting is a biblical practice, but it’s biblical in a peculiar way. It’s presupposed on page after page, but never explained. “When you fast” is a typical beginning for a biblical sentence on the subject, and it leads modern readers to wonder if we missed a page somewhere back in the Old Testament —maybe in…
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Those Top Twelve Books, Online For Free
Last week I listed the books we use for our semester On Knowing God, which amount to a Top Twelve Theology Books list from the whole of Christian history. A reader sent me a follow-up note pointing out that all but one of the books is available online at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. While…
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On Knowing God: The Top Twelve Books
In the Torrey Honors Institute, we teach an 8-unit class called “On Knowing God.” Following our great books curriculum and a Socratic pedagogy, we give students a one-semester introduction to the classic Christian texts. In fact, when the faculty designed this intensely theological semester, we realized we had a chance to assign, along with the…
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On True Repentance
Some time ago, I was having coffee with a friend when our conversation turned to the topic of repentance. Neither one of us could really remember a time in our Christian lives when we were so sorry for our sins that we threw ourselves at God’s mercy, repented of our sins, and begged for God’s…