John Duncan (1796 – February 26, 1870) was no Rabbi; he was a Scottish pastor who did missions work among the Jews in Hungary. Luminaries like Adolph Saphir (author of The Hidden Life) and Alfred Edersheim (author of The Life and Times of Jesus the

Oscar Cullmann was born on February 25, 1902, and lived until 1999. His most influential work was the book Christ and Time, in which he presented the biblical view of time and contrasted it with other theological ideas about time. According to Cullmann, the flow

At 10:30 in the morning on February 24, 1930, Harry Ironside’s phone rang. It was the assistant pastor of Chicago’s Moody Church, telling him that the board was in unanimous agreement that he should be the next pastor. Ironside (1876-1951) eventually accepted the call, and

It’s really only for one hymn that we remember Sarah Adams (1805-1848), but what a hymn: “Nearer My God to Thee.” Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee! E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me; Still all my song shall be nearer,

Today, February 21, is the day John Henry Newman was born. I will skip Newman’s biographical details and all the ways he makes my Protestant soul grumpy, and instead cut straight to a prayer that he published which I have always found very helpful. Here

William Burt Pope (1822-1903) was probably the finest theological mind the Methodist movement has ever produced. I have eulogized him elsewhere, and his major works are finally becoming available online (the three-volume compendium of theology can be downloaded from the internet archive, or in e-book

Today is the day Finan, the second bishop of Lindisfarne, died. What is Lindisfarne? Well, go to the far North of England, the part that’s almost Scotland, called Northumbria. Now wait for low tide so you can walk out to the tiny tidal island: Lindisfarne,

He was born Philip Schwartzerd, a German name meaning “black earth.” But like many young scholars of the time, he showed his commitment to ancient learning by translating his name into Greek: melan = black, chthon = earth. Melanchthon intended to live the humanist scholarly

“The last pagans of the Western world,” said Czeslaw Milosz of his Lithuanian ancestry, adding that “Europe too, had her redskins.” With that politically incorrect comment, Milosz underlined how late Lithuania was to join the rest of Europe as a national member of Christendom. It

Richard Allen (1760-1831) was the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. His life story is remarkable (born into slavery, he bought his own freedom; rejected by the religious establishment, he distinguished himself as a minister of the gospel), but the best thing is that