Reflections on the loving kindness of the Triune God
This entry was first published on the Cor Deo website – I invite any responses to be offered on that site (click here to go to Cor Deo) A man asked me the question out of the blue. “Do we still have idols today?” A couple of options jumped to mind before I answered. First …
Read More Enjoying Idols?Car dealers speak of the trim levels available in every car model—meaning the features automatically added to a given version of that model. Options range from the very basic to the fully loaded. And salesmen know that the appetites and wealth of buyers vary so a successful salesman learns how to nudge a given buyer …
Read More True JesusThis entry is also offered on the Cor Deo website. Please offer any responses on that site (just click here). We may be too hard on the apostle Peter. Or, to put it differently, I think it’s unlikely we would have done much better than he did in his “confession” week. So while we may …
Read More Confused by JesusThis Saturday Jonathan married Rosemary and I was invited to offer a Bible reflection for the occasion. Let me offer in a nutshell what I shared with them. In its ultimate expression marriage is God sharing his eternal life with us: we are united to Christ in marital oneness by his Spirit. So Jon and …
Read More MarriedThis was first offered on the Cor Deo website and repeated here. Please post any responses on that site. Thanks! Click on Cor Deo A rich benefit in reading through the Bible regularly and at a bold pace is that themes start to jump off the pages. One of these—I’ll note it in a moment—especially …
Read More Delighted or driven?Jonathan Edwards, in his Freedom of the Will, wrote that “Many particular things may concur and unite their strength to induce the mind; and when it is so, all together are as it were one complex motive” (Yale edition, 1.2—p. 141). Let me chase Edwards’ point: how is it that a host of “particular things” …
Read More Thinking about thingsThis post was first published on the Cor Deo website. If you choose to respond I’d love for you to respond on that site. To go there please click here. Yesterday over lunch Matt, a global minister who serves in Germany, shared something important. Brokenness, he commented, is something we all experience in a fallen …
Read More BrokenGod—the Father, Son, Spirit God of the Bible—is all about relationships. He always has been and always will be. Yet too many of Christians operate as slightly modified modalists in at least one respect: we treat God as a single and ultimate power source. Sorry for the jargon! The term modalism comes from early discussions …
Read More ModalismThis post has also been published on the Cor Deo site. To visit click here. What is real? What is unreal? And how can we know the difference? It isn’t always clear. Today, for instance, we have feature length movies with computer-generated scenes so we might not know at a given moment whether the actor …
Read More RealityMany young Americans and Europeans today have given up on religion—they treat God as unappealing and unnecessary. Others retain a “sort of” God. For them God is a spiritual fashion accessory. Still others treat God as a “what if”: what if there really is a God, a heaven, and a hell? “Have we done enough …
Read More Knowing God