The season of Christmas has ended, and we are supposed to be in summer: we are wearing sweaters most mornings and evenings, for the days have been cooler than usual in Southern New Zealand. Australia could do with our showers, and we’d like a bit of their heat. The school holidays are reaching the point […]
Calvin meditates on the response to the glory of God, uniformly throughout the Old Testament. Fear. Hence that dread and amazement with which as Scripture uniformly relates, holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God. When we see those who previously stood firm and secure so quaking with terror, that […]
Most of what I want to say about the loss of one of the best voices of the Boomers. Who lived through that revolution which destroyed tradition, finding his love of tradition and tribe while the cultural revolution in the West was in the flood. There is more to come, but Adam writes wisely here. […]
I go to a non-liturgical church, and I don’t believe that the lectionary is necessary. So why am I deliberately, this Sunday, and probably for a while, referring to the Church calendar? I do not think celebrating Holy Days adds to our righteousness or subtracts from it. The Puritans used to strip these things out […]
One of the troubles with theological geniuses is that they can’t shut up and have the street smarts of a recalcitrant mule. Give Paul — a fully trained Rabbi by the best Rabbi of his generation Gamaliel– and when Christ encounters him he puts scripture together faster than the workmen that Christ had as disciples. […]
The current fashion of seeing virtue in what we have done needs to be skewered. An angry atheist seems to understand this, and yes, I’m referring to Ricky Gervais because he reminded celebrities that they live in a bubble, and their virtue is but vanity. Calvin foreshadows this: yes, he knew his Thomist theology, and […]
I’ve read the Bible for years but did not ever consider that the family I have derives its name from God, despite C.S. Lewis hinting of this when his hero Ransome in “Perelandra” is told that he was named for a reason. What the world has not forgotten is that God made families, and placed […]
Over the Christmas period I left the laptop at home and did what I needed to do on a cellphone or using notepaper. Family was the priority. Yes, there were blog posts on the lectionary, but these could and were scheduled. The press are looking at the decade ahead, but in the meantime Australia is […]
In which we look at the Institutes, as a correction to modern thought. One cannot work by reason alone, but need the divine, the true, the good. If not for anything else but a plumbline: in this fallen state we are crooked. We are told by the philosophers to know ourselves: this is not a […]
Jesus is the light we should live under. If we need to hide what we are doing, it’s generally unwise [1]. Christ says those who follow him don’t do things in alleyways. They confront, at times they disobey the rules of their nation, for we have never been promised righteous rulers. But the Pharisees showed […]
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