Resources from 2020
Betray kind husband thy spouse to our sights… John Donne There we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise. This is what shall be in the end without end. For what other end do we propose to ourselves than to attain to the kingdom of which there is no end? Augustine Psalm 46 […]
It would be no exaggeration to say that a proper understanding of the two most important covenants that God has made with the human-race is key to understanding the Biblical story, and especially for understanding the apostle Paul’s claim that Christians are not under Law, but under grace. The first of these covenants has become […]
John Bombaro: In God’s Two Words you bring Lutherans and Reformed into conversation on the distinction between law and gospel. What is it about this topic that compelled you to choose it as a conversation piece for today? Jonathan Linebaugh: In the sixteenth century, the Protestant reformers both had wanted to have this kind of […]
Over the past couple of months, much has been written—and many a meme created—on the much-anticipated end of 2020. The world, it seems, is ready to have done with it! Ignorance and uncertainty, cowardice and impudence, fear, injustice, cruelty, and violence—long the stain on human history—have crowded our waking moments and haunted our restless slumber. […]
The Mystery of the Incarnation Christmas is the celebration of the mystery of the incarnation, that God became man and was born of the virgin Mary. This should invoke wonder and awe at the wisdom of God’s salvific plan for humanity. The first, apparently, to fall down in worship were not the powerful and or […]
What God has done in Christ is cause for confession of praise. The delightful responsibility of the Christian theologian is not only to offer up the whole range of judgments about this, all the affirmations and negations, but to maximize as well as he can the “some understanding” within the predicates of these judgments. Judgment […]
Christmas is a time to wonder at the mystery that is the Incarnation – that the eternal Son took our flesh without ceasing to be who he essentially is. That is the mystery of Bethlehem, the Creator of space and time entered into his own Creation without ceasing to transcend it as Lord. This is […]
At the 1529 Colloquy of Marburg, Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli famously engaged in a heated theological debate surrounding the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, leading to Luther endlessly repeating the phrase “Hoc est corpus meum” (this is my body) as definitive proof of the identification between Christ’s incarnate body and that which […]
Modernity is an era of exposure. How so? In a context where the ancient paths must be chosen—where the world around us will not reinforce them—any relation to those paths will share in the pathologies that attend human willing. This is not to deny, of course, that civilization itself cannot mediate pathology. Indeed it has […]
Let us not be ashamed to receive instruction from her who carried in her womb Christ the eternal “wisdom of God.” – John Calvin Every year as we get close to Christmas, we begin to hear familiar carols, hymns, and songs. We also begin to hear familiar debates over Christmas music. Should we wait until […]
We’re steeped in a cultural soup of ascent. From religious life framed as the journey upwards, to transcending human limitations through technology, or climbing the corporate ladder, the mentality of ascent is ubiquitous. Career advancement. Personal achievement. The moral arc of history. And so it goes. But as the incarnation of our Lord in the […]
It began with one of those time-lapse videos, the ones that record a process from start to finish, like a chick emerging from an egg or a flower opening. This particular video showed how to decorate pies by cutting and shaping the top crust. Under a perfectly positioned camera, a pair of perfectly manicured hands […]
I wake up and spend some time reading the Bible and praying. I need it. Then I am jolted into the day. Family devotions, exercise, breakfast. I try to snatch several minutes of reading with my toddler before trundling her into the car. We go clean together. Rather, I clean while she plays and sleeps. […]
“Word of the Father, late in flesh appearing.” Millions of people will sing these words from the classic advent carol “O Come, All Ye Faithful” in the ensuing weeks leading up to Christmas. As always, many of these voices will belong to unbelievers, who every year join in celebrating a story they have either outright […]
Interest in the paranormal consistently increases and continues to spread each year. With it, interest in angels, demons, and Satan has increased dramatically. We live in a time where a few years ago, the word of the year for the Oxford dictionary was “post-truth” used by the dictionary to describe how people had moved past […]
