Deuteronomy 12:18: you shall you shall eat them before the LORD your God in the place which the LORD your God will choose, you and your son and daughter, and your male and female servants, and the Levite who is within your gates; and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God in all your . . . . Continue Reading »
“In the Word was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness.” Thus John describes the incarnation of the Son. He comes as the living and life-giving light of the world. That’s good news. In the beginning, God spoke and light shone into the . . . . Continue Reading »
John Meyendorff gets the nub of Cyrillian - one is tempted to say simply orthodox - Christology in this brief statement: “God without ceasing to be God, made human nature his own to the point of mortality.” God joins Himself to humanity, makes it His, and won’t let go. Even death . . . . Continue Reading »
PROVERBS 24:21-22 Verse 21 begins with an exhortation to “fear” Yahweh and the king. Fear involves respect and honor, but also includes an element of what we call fear. To fear Yahweh is to recognize that He is the one who has power to send both soul and body to hell, to recognize that . . . . Continue Reading »
From Eusebius’s panegyric to Constantine: “as the many-stringed lyre is composed of different chords , both sharp and flat, some slightly, others tensely strained, and others intermediate between the two extremes, yet all attuned according to the rules of harmonic art; even so this . . . . Continue Reading »
Constantine says that some created things “possess wonderful properties, and the full apprehension of which is very difficult. Like hot springs. Or “the fruit of the olive-tree and the vine,” which “deserve especial notice; the one for its power of renovating and cheering . . . . Continue Reading »
Thomas Madden offers a contrarian analysis of American and Roman empire in his recent book, Empires of Trust . Most empires in history, he says, “have sought to build their power in whatever way they can, making war on their neighbors when it seems advantageous and continuing to do so until . . . . Continue Reading »
In another part of his oration, Constantine analyzes Virgil’s famed Fourth Eclogue, which Christians often took as a pagan prophecy of Christ. Constantine believes that it’s a deliberate prophecy, but one he deliberately obscured for fear of persecution: “these words are spoken . . . . Continue Reading »
Constantine (of all people) provides a neat little analysis of the violent ontology of polytheism is his Good Friday oration, which Eusebius appended to the Life of Constantine : if the dominion of these [created] things, numberless as they are, were in the hands, not of one but of many, there must . . . . Continue Reading »
The First Things web site today posted some of my biblical-theological reflections on missions and culture: http://www.firstthings.com. . . . . Continue Reading »
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