Category: Theology
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From the Heart of Jesus
John Mark Reynolds, 2004. The heart of Jesus Christ was pierced by a lance and from it came blood and water. Longinus is the name given to the soldier who dared touch the Lord Glory. Tradition tells us that one drop of blood from the wound converted Longinus. Augustine writes that the blood and water…
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The Problem of Pleasure: Why I Am a Christian
John Mark Reynolds, 2004. Thanks to Craig Hazen, I was able to speak to a group of five thousand Christians at Biola. Here are my remarks. The Problem of Pleasure My daughter Jane is six, a very precocious six. She has formed a new club with her friends called The Hanging-Out Girls. When I…
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Reflections on Easter, 2004
John Mark Reynolds, 2004. Christ has conquered! The voyage to the undiscovered country has been made and one man has returned, Jesus of Nazareth. He is now plainly revealed to be God’s only Son. Trapped in the cave, bound in the chains of our sin, we could not see the light of life. Christ came…
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Reflections on Holy Saturday, 2004
John Mark Reynolds, 2004. This is the day between. Good Friday with its horror is past, but the joy of Easter is still ahead. Holy Saturday is the time we live in now. Christ has come and Christ will come again. Now we are in Holy Saturday. When I was a child, I thought the…
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Reflections on Maundy Tuesday, 2004
John Mark Reynolds, 2004. Tonight I stood before God in a service I did not create. I didn’t sit with my other friends and make up the work of the Church as I went. The Church was not emerging tonight, it was standing on a firm foundation. They did not have to hear my words,…
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On Dorothy Sayers’ “Mind of the Maker”
John Mark Reynolds, 2004. Still thinking about Dorothy Sayers Mind of the Maker. Why do so few people know about this brilliant book?An artist creates. This act, according to Sayers, reflects the triune nature of God: Idea, Energy/Action, and Power. The author writes her book based on an Idea. This idea, like the Father is…
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Revelation and Reason
John Mark Reynolds, 2004. Today’s class was on Dorothy Sayers. Ably led by Miss Silvers, we delved into the relationship between Revelation and reason. Some of my thoughts from this class. I think the world to be a reasonable place, but it may not all be open to our reason. Some problems are just too…
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Reflections on the Annunciation
John Mark Reynolds, 2004. Today we reflect on the Annunciation. Mary becomes the Mother of God. Gabriel, the Strength of God, comes to make this world morphing announcement to Mary. Why does God send an angel? Couldn’t the Divine have done the job better himself? Of course. God excels at everything. He is like that…
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Blindness and Sight
John Mark Reynolds, 2004. John 9- Jesus heals a “man born blind.The Greeks wrote that the blind could see better in the spiritual world, because they were not distracted by the physical. They made their great sages and prophets blind (Homer, Tiresias). To see the world where the gods lived, one had to ignore the…
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Thoughts on Satan
John Mark Reynolds, 2004. Satan begins by saying he would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven. Soon he realizes his error, but by then it is too late. He reaches for heaven, falls to hell, and ends up serving the divine purpose in any case. Most of us would not make that choice…
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The “Language of Appearance” in Genesis
John Mark Reynolds, 2004. Biblical scholars sometimes resort to the argument that a “language of appearance” can allow for the cosmology and history of the Bible to be false while still not destroying inerrancy. The Bible can assert in Genesis that the flood came from an ocean above the earth through windows, because the human…