Matthew 3:11: John said, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. When John baptizes Jesus, the Spirit comes down as a dove and rests on Jesus. . . . . Continue Reading »
Jesus ascended to become our defender, who lives to pray for us. At Pentecost, Jesus poured out the Spirit, who also intercedes for us. Our prayers to the Father are confirmed by the testimony of two divine witnesses, the heavenly witness of the Son and the earthly witness of the Spirit. The Son is . . . . Continue Reading »
JW Hewitt sums up the difference between Greco-Roman and Christian conceptions of charis in a 1925 Classical Weekly essay. Greek religion, “which discovered no impassible gulf between god and man, the relations of man to man and god to god were supposed to hold between man and god.” . . . . Continue Reading »
In the past, I have taken the story of Hezekiah and Babylon (2 Kings 20; Isaiah 39) as a sort of “fall” of Hezekiah. On further consideration, I don’t think this is sustainable. The episode seems to have another function in Isaiah, and I have concluded that there is no . . . . Continue Reading »
In his The Lord Has Saved Me , Michael Barre points to various numerical and other patterns used in the Psalms. Barre’s discussion of the Psalm of Hezekiah (Isaiah 38) gets extremely detailed, but his introduction to the techniques of Hebrew poetry is excellent. For instance: “Several . . . . Continue Reading »
Rich Bledsoe agreed with my analysis of 1-2 Kings and the divided church, and offers these further reflections on Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism. The remainder of this post is from Rich. Van Leeuwen in his magisterial CHRISTIANITY IN WORLD HISTORY: The Meeting of the Faiths of East and . . . . Continue Reading »
Yahweh tells Hezekiah through the prophet that he will have a sign. It’s a sign concerning ascent and descent. The word for “ascent” or “stair” ( ma’alah , from ‘alah , “to go up”) occurs four times (!) in the passage (Isaiah 38:8), and Yahweh . . . . Continue Reading »
When told by Isaiah that he will die from his sickness, Hezekiah turns his face to the wall and prays. A wooden rendering of the prayer would be along these lines: “Remember, please, that I have walked before your face in truth and with a heart of completion/peace ( shalem ) and the good in . . . . Continue Reading »
There are several parallels between the story of Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 21) and the account of Hezekiah’s sickness and the visit from the Babylonians (2 Kings 20; Isaiah 38-39). First a list of the connections: 1) When Naboth refuses to sell his vineyard, Ahab lays down on his bed . . . . Continue Reading »
There has been a huge response to my post on “Too catholic to be Catholic” earlier this week, and I can’t hope to respond to everything. Given what I’ve seen of some of the responses, though, it will be helpful for me to clarify and elaborate briefly the biblical framework I . . . . Continue Reading »
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