Category: Theology
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Year of the Priest or (for Evangelicals) Year of the Pastor
I’m no Roman Catholic but I can certainly appreciate many of the things that come out of the Vatican. So much so, in fact, that I subscribe to the daily e-mail update from the Vatican Information Service. Nothing like knowing what Benedict XVI is up to each day! More importantly, I find out about events…
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A Gigantic Conspiracy of Misdirection
We have been brought to the point where we both can and must get our life’s priorities straight. From current Christian publications you might think that the most vital issue for any real or would-be Christian in the world today is church union, or social witness, or dialogue with other Christians and other faiths, or…
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Happy Birthday, Peter Martyr Vermigli
Today (September 8) is the birthday of Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562), a Protestant Reformer born and trained in Italy, later active in England and Switzerland. Though he was forced to move from city to city and was sometimes in danger, Peter did not in fact become a martyr. “Martyr” was not a title, but was…
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“G. K. Chesterton, We Love You!” – Brazil
There’s something funny about professors who teach old books being involved in new media. That’s what Scriptorium Daily is, of course — people talking about old stuff in a new venue. It’s funny because of what conventional wisdom leads us to believe – that the more old books we read, the more inclined we are…
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What’s a Nice Christian Girl Like You Doing Reading Homer?
Two sisters sit at home, talking. The younger sister does needlework and arranges flowers picked from the garden, as she passes the time until her boyfriend comes to visit. The older sister, on the other hand, is trying to make some kind of sense out of her wasted life, having an emotional crisis brought on…
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Henry More on Creation
Today (September 1) is the day Henry More (1614 – 1687), one of the Cambridge Platonists, died. More wrote a lot of very difficult theology, some of it in extended poetic form. He was a strange mix of rationalist and mystic. He was an important interpreter of Descartes, and probably a major influence on Newton.…
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Wanted: Humility
Well, another school year is starting here at the Torrey Honors Institute, which means there are about 375 students roaming the halls again. It’s good to see the returning students, hear what they did over the summer (if anything!) and start getting to know the freshmen. Already in only three days of classes, I have…
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Finney, Finney, Finney
Today (August 29) is the birthday of Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875), whose accomplishments as a revivalist preacher are staggering. The most striking statistic usually reported is that when he came to Rochester, the population tripled but the crime rate dropped by two-thirds. Other preachers might be bold enough to preach against the evils of saloons,…
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How Augustine Died
Today (August 28) is the day Augustine of Hippo died in the year 430. His first biographer, Possidius, tells us how it happened in his Life of Augustine. Augustine died in the city of Hippo, which was under siege by barbarians throughout his final illness (he contracted a fever “in the third month of the…
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Griffith-Thomas: Principles of Trinitarian Theology
William Henry Griffith Thomas (1861-1924) wrote an excellent one-volume systematic theology called The Principles of Theology. Published in 1930, it takes the form of an evangelical commentary on the 39 Articles of the Church of England. According to J.I. Packer, the book “may be said to have rounded off a four-hundred year era of Protestant…
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Caesarius of Arles
Today (August 27) is the day Ceasarius, Bishop of Arles, died in the year 542. He is most important because of things he didn’t write. Caesarius never wanted to be original, and he wasn’t. He was a conservator and transmitter of the Christian tradition as he received it. He had been a monk at Lerins…
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Karl Bahrdt, Worst Theologian Ever
Today (August 25) is the birthday of Karl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741-1792), a theologian so bad that it is hard to find anything good to say about him. (He liked tolerance. There, I said one good thing about him.) He was, says one encyclopedia, “a caricature of the vulgar rationalism of the eighteenth century.” A Lutheran…