Category: Theology
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Three Reasons to Write Out Your Ideas Now
Three authors who knew a lot more when they were older, but were glad they had written their books when they were younger: John Wesley: “Nay, I know not that I can write a better on The Circumcision of the Heart than I did five and forty years ago.” C. H. Dodd in 1958: “I have…
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Making the Most of The Shack
How should a theologian respond to a popular book that includes unsound teaching? The popular book I’m thinking of is The Shack, by William P. Young. After getting dozens of questions about The Shack, I wrote a review of it in early 2009. Actually, I wrote five reviews of it, in five different voices, partly…
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Sleep Talkin’ Theologian 4: “Translucent in Honor, Suspended in Dignity.”
And here is the epic conclusion to my sleep-talking adventures from graduate school. (Click here for installments 1, 2, and 3.) I’m sure I still talk in my sleep, but probably not as much as back in the day. During the time my wife took these notes, I was reading assigned theology all day every…
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Sleep Talkin’ Theologian 3: “Like a Light Beam In A Hallway.”
Installment 3 of 4 in this series of transcripts of my sleep-talking adventures from the late 90s. No, I cannot explain most of these. *** Something about a surgeon Getting ready to cut something out of someone [who?] Part of the time it was me. Part of the time it was some guy I didn’t…
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Sleep Talkin’ Theologian 2: “Looks Like Birds But It’s Really An Angel.”
Transcript 2 of 4 in the annals of the sleep-talkin’ theologian. These notes date from about 1997. My long-suffering wife, a morning person, asks me questions like “when do you want to wake up?” and “what are you dreaming about?” Still asleep, I answer her questions. Sometimes she interjects ideas into my dreams, and I…
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Sleep Talkin’ Theologian: “How Long Will Ye Linger Between Two Cabinets?”
There’s a man in England, Adam Lennard, who talks in his sleep. He speaks very clearly, says truly bizarre things, and is recorded by his wife’s voice-activated digital recorder. His wife has begun blogging his nightly oracles, and their blog is suddenly the Next Big Thing: millions of readers, interviews on talk shows, merchandise, the…
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An Excerpt on Knowledge and Rhetoric From “Education for Human Flourishing”
To follow up Fred Sanders’ review of my book, I have posted a short excerpt from Education for Human Flourishing published by IVP Academic. The passage below describes the difference between rhetoric and knowledge, and how important it is for us to be able to distinguish between the two. Rhetoric Versus Knowledge It is easy…
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The Baptism of Christ: 8, The Holy Spirit
In one sense, portraying the Holy Spirit in baptism icons is not a problem at all: the Spirit descended in the form of a dove. The iconographer does not need to try to get behind this simple assertion of the New Testament to ask “why a dove?” For the most part, painters just seem grateful…
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Should the Earth This Moment Cleave
In 1750, after two earthquakes hit England, Charles Wesley wrote two small volumes of hymns on earthquakes. It is not too much to say that he developed a whole theology of earthquakes, in song. They answer the question, when a believer’s country is struck by such a disaster, what should that believer say, or sing,…
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The Baptism of Christ: Part 7: The Son
Christ in icons of the baptism is identifiable just as he is in any painting or icon: his traditional bearded face, and a halo (nimbus) with a cross inscribed in it. Of course there are exceptions: the Arian baptistery in Ravenna featured a beardless Christ, and in the post-Renaissance West, halos fell out of popularity…
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The Baptism of Christ: 6, The Father
In this leisurely exploration of the image of the baptism of Christ, we finally turn to a description of the three persons of the Trinity. They are linked in the center of the image by the vertical beam of light, running down from the Father through the Spirit to the Son. The question of representing…
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The Baptism of Christ: 5. Light
The feast of Christ’s baptism is called “the Feast of Light,” linking baptism with illumination in a tradition too ancient to trace. The apocryphal literature surrounding the New Testament is full of Jordan light imagery. The Gospel of the Ebionites reports that simultaneous with the voice of the Father, “a great light shone around about.”…