Today (July 29) is the day in 1890 when Vincent van Gogh died from a gunshot wound he had inflicted on himself two days earlier, leaving behind many questions.
That van Gogh was mentally tormented throughout his life is widely known. It is an unavoidable subject for biographers, but also an irresistible subject for anybody who has ever stood in front of a van Gogh painting a...
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J. Gresham Machen was born this day (July 28) in 1881, and died in 1937. An adherent of the Old Princeton theology and protegé of B. B. Warfield, Machen launched a classic attack on modernist theology in 1923 with his book, Christianity and Liberalism (New York: Macmillan, 1923).
As modernism made deeper inroads into the denominations and Princeton Seminary reorganized, ...
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Benjamin Warfield once wrote that ‘the the Reformation, inwardly considered, was just the ultimate triumph of Augustine’s doctrine of grace over Augustine’s doctrine of the Church.’ Warfield captures both the centrality of Augustine to the faith of the Reformers and the contested interpretation of the bishop of Hippo. These same two features appear in Karl Barth’s rec...
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Once upon a time, the cruel emperor Decius came to the city of Ephesus to build new temples at which all citizens, but especially the Christians, would be required to worship him by sacrifices, or else die.
Now in this city lived seven Christian men named Maximian, Malchus, Marcian, Dionysius, John, Serapion, and Constantine. When they refused to participate in emperor-worsh...
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Today (July 26) in 1933, Charles Albert Tindley died at the age of 77. Born just one half-step out of slavery in 1856, Tindley rose to the rank of pastoring a 3,000 member Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.
Tindley has been called "the prince of preachers" (apologies to Charles Spurgeon), but I haven't been able to get my hands on any of his sermons and don't know ...
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William Burkitt was born this day (July 25) in 1650. Burkitt was a graduate of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and an Anglican minister. He was the author of the celebrated Expository Notes on the New Testament, published in two volumes about 1700. Later luminaries such as Matthew Henry and Charles Spurgeon recommended this work highly.
Burkitt launched his work without an elabor...
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Oswald Chambers (1874-1917) is remembered for one devotional book, My Utmost for His Highest, which was published, like all but one of his 30 books, posthumously by his widow Biddie. Biddie was a stenographer who captured Oswald's spoken ministry and, after his death, turned her notes into volumes of publishable writing. In 1935 she published Utmost, a selection of short, daily...
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It was on July 22, 1668, that Madame Guyon (Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon, 1648-1717) had the most important spiritual experience in a life that was all about spiritual experiences. She was blown away, lost in God, plunged into the depths of the divine love. At least that's how she talked about this day, a day that she commemorated for the rest of her life.
She had...
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Q: How do you explain I Tim 2:12: But I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence?"
A: The Revised Version gives the meaning more plainly: "But I permit not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion over a man, but to be in quietness."
The meaning of the passage is determined by the words used and by the context. Paul is giving in...
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Today (July 21) is the day that Col. Robert G. Ingersoll died in 1899. Ingersoll was the most popular promoter of agnosticism in the late nineteenth century, though his favored way of characterizing his beliefs was "Free Thought." He not only drew large crowds when he came to town, but he also commanded large sums for admission. Thousands of people were willing to pay one dolla...
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I’m in Australia at the moment (Melbourne, specifically), and I came to present a paper at a conference here. But whenever I present a paper, I always linger in the conference city a few days longer so that I can actually see the city—how sad it would be if I saw nothing but the inside of the conference center!
Here are a few interesting tidbits about Australia that I l...
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Today (July 20) is the anniversary of the communion service on the moon, in 1969.
Buzz Aldrin, an elder in the Presbyterian Church of Webster, Texas, had planned ahead for it, obviously, or he wouldn't have had the elements of bread and wine with him in the lunar module. Beyond that, though, Presbyterian theology recognizes that taking communion all by yourself is a pretty w...
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