God With Us?

In his Grace and Christology in the Early Church (Oxford Early Christian Studies) , Donald Fairbairn lays out some helpful distinctions that clarify what was at stake in the Nestorian controversy. He initially lays out a distinction between “composite” understandings of the unity of . . . . Continue Reading »

Exhortation

Epiphany is a season about light, about the light that God is, about the Light from Light that God sent, about the light from the Light of Light that shines from the church to draw the nations to the brightness of His rising. Epiphany is also, inescapably, about darkness. Light came into the world, . . . . Continue Reading »

Eucharistic meditation

John 1:14: The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God doesn’t need the incarnation any more than He needs the world. He would be the same infinitely joyful, infinitely lively and infinitely satisfied God if we had never existed and if Jesus had never been born. God doesn’t need the . . . . Continue Reading »

Exhortation

It’s often said that the ancients couldn’t conceive of the incarnation because they couldn’t conceive of the infinite inhabiting the finite. The real problem was more fundamental: The ancients couldn’t conceive of anything truly infinite. An infinite thing has no boundaries; . . . . Continue Reading »

Shame of the cross

Gregory of Nyssa ( Against Eunomius 3.3) recognizes that the crux (!) of the debate between Arian and orthodox is the cross: “we say that the God who was manifested through the cross must be honored in the same way as the Father is honored while they consider the Passion as an obstacle to . . . . Continue Reading »

Exhortation

During the fourth century, the church had in an intense debate about the nature of the Son who became flesh. Does the Father choose to create a Son, as Arius believed? Or is having a Son essential to the Father’s very existence as God? These debates seem tedious and irrelevant. Can anyone . . . . Continue Reading »

Jesus accepte le souffrance

In Messiaen’s sequence of nine organ pieces on La Nativite du Seigneur , the piece entitled “Jesus accepte le Souffrance” is the seventh, between “Les Anges” and “Les Mages.” It seems to refer to the slaughter of innocents in Bethlehem, but Messiaen has . . . . Continue Reading »

Where’s the Mystery?

Anatolios argues that one of the differences between theologians of the unity of will like Arius (Father begets Son by will) and theologians of the unity of being like Alexander and Athanasius (Son is of the Father’s very being) is the location of mystery. Arius located the apophatic limit in . . . . Continue Reading »

Eusebian political theology

Anatolios ( Retrieving Nicaea ) admits that “we should not leap to the conclusion that a trinitarian theology based on ontological subordinationism, with Father and Son relating within a hierarchy of will and obedience, will necessarily lead to a monarchical political theology.” Yet, . . . . Continue Reading »