In his discussion of penitential seasons, Doug Wilson also offers this argument: “what gospel is implicitly preached by the practice of drawing out the process of repentance and forgiveness? It is a false gospel. Now I am not saying that fellow Christians who observe their church year in this . . . . Continue Reading »
Doug Wilson recently preached a sermon arguing against the adoption of “penitential seasons” of Advent and Lent. He makes a number of arguments and his reservations are worth considering. Here I want to respond to one of his arguments (from his sermon notes, online at . . . . Continue Reading »
Ratzinger charged that after Vatican II, some Catholics “deliberately raised ‘desacralization’ to the level of a program.” By this, he was referring to a liturgical theology that begins from the abolition of the temple and the rending of the vile and concludes that . . . . Continue Reading »
The story is told of the desert father Abba Apollo, who was appalled when he encountered a devil without knees. John Ratzinger wrote of this story “The inability to kneel is seen as the very essence of the diabolical.” . . . . Continue Reading »
Matthew 9:17: Nor do men put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out, and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved. Jesus is the bridegroom, come at last to his waiting guests and attendants. And with the . . . . Continue Reading »
Matthew 8:27: And the men marveled, saying, What kind of man is this, that even the winds and sea obey Him? Water has a complex significance in the Bible. On the one hand, water is essential to life. Without water, plants dry and die. Without water, human life withers and fades away. The biblical . . . . Continue Reading »
Against political/nationalist interpretations of the Hussite movement, Bynum argues that the central motif of the Hussites was direct access to blood. Two thoughts: First, this is still a central demand of the early Reformation, a point that Bynum touches on but doesn’t develop. Second, she . . . . Continue Reading »
In her history of late medieval blood devotion ( Wonderful Blood , 2007), Caroline Walker Bynum teases out the connections between withdrawal of the cup from the laity and blood mysticism: “some of the cloistered, denied access to the cup at mass, received it in vision. Others (for example, . . . . Continue Reading »
Micah 7:1: For I am like the fruit pickers, like the grape gatherers; there is not a cluster of grapes to eat, or a first-ripe fig which I crave. As we saw in the sermon this morning, Micah’s search for fruit on the vines and fig trees of Israel anticipates Jesus’ similar search for . . . . Continue Reading »
Every church season has a color, and the color for Epiphany is green. Why? In Scripture as in life, green is a color of life. The righteous will flourish in old age, says the Psalmist; they shall be full of sap and very green. Solomon tells us that the one who trusts in riches will fall, but the . . . . Continue Reading »
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