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Search results for: “trinity”

  • Review of Morey’s Embodying our Faith

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    Greg Peters
    in

    Tim Morey’s Embodying our Faith: Becoming a Living, Sharing, Practicing Church (InterVarsity, 2009) is an enjoyable read. As a reworking of his Fuller Theological Seminary D.Min. thesis, Morey’s text is engaging, his writing style friendly and his content engaging. In seven chapters, Morey gives a well-reasoned defense for what he calls an “embodied apologetic,” that…

  • “We’re on a mission from God.”

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    Matt Jenson
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    In the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers, Dan Akroyd deadpans: “We’re on a mission from God.” He and his partner are in the process of putting their band back together and are enlisting an old bandmate, and Akroyd’s character flatly insists that the divine origin of their project is sufficient warrant for the man to…

  • What are We Preparing For? (Lessons from Justin Key)

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    Fred Sanders
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    Here at the beginning of a new academic semester, all the students and professors are full of big plans. We’re going to cover so much material, learn so many new skills, and develop so many relationships. We’ve got a long semester ahead of us, and since it’s a Spring semester, there’s a big graduation at…

  • Making the Most of The Shack

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    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…

  • Sleep Talkin’ Theologian 4: “Translucent in Honor, Suspended in Dignity.”

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    Fred Sanders
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    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…

  • Sleep Talkin’ Theologian 2: “Looks Like Birds But It’s Really An Angel.”

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    Fred Sanders
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    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…

  • The Baptism of Christ: 8, The Holy Spirit

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    Fred Sanders
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    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…

  • The Baptism of Christ: 6, The Father

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    Fred Sanders
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    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…

  • The Baptism of Christ: 5. Light

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    Fred Sanders
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    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.”…

  • The Baptism of Christ: 4. Angels and People

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    Fred Sanders
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    Angels are not mentioned in the scriptural account of the baptism, but they are almost always presented in the iconography. Perhaps they are included because the baptism is read together with the temptation in the wilderness, which followed it immediately, and after which the gospels report that “the devil left Jesus, and suddenly angels came…

  • Mary Daly (1928-2010): Radical Feminist Theologian

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    Fred Sanders
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    The term “radical feminism” gets tossed around pretty loosely in theological circles, and usually means “feminism that goes farther than I’m comfortable with.” But there are such things as radical feminist theologians. Probably the most influential of them all, Mary Daly, died this week. This post (rather long, probably only of interest to theologians after…

  • The Baptism of Christ: 1. The Earliest Images

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    Fred Sanders
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    The baptism of Christ is among the earliest New Testament scenes selected for depiction in Christian art. Günter Ristow mentions this in Die Taufe Christi (Recklinghausen: Verlag Aurel Bongers, 1965, 12). It is found in the catacombs, on early christian sarcophagi, and in the very first christian monumental architecture. Given all the water imagery in…