Month: April 2010
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Seeing the Resurrected Son of God
Easter is not a day, it is a season. Thus, instead of remembering our celebration of Easter a few weeks ago as we polish off the last remaining ear of the chocolate bunny or choke down that final Peep, we need to be continually living in the Easter moment. The Lord is risen, alleluia! In…
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The Modern Doctrine of the Trinity
The Trinity is God, and God does not change. The Trinity doesn’t develop, mature, improve, shift around, wax or wane, or alter with the latest trends and fashions. But the doctrine of the Trinity is something theologians talk about, and theologians do change, and the way they talk changes. So it’s possible to describe the…
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Whiteboard Mathmachine Mousehouse
Freddy Age Nine isn’t opposed to math. But as an accomplished visual artist, he knows how to use visual design to add interest and motivation to the routine arithmetical functions required of today’s busy fourth grader. Simple operations can be carried out with this mouse-operated math machine: At the center is the mouse, facing the…
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The Eternal Trinity
Some time ago I got a note from a reader asking if a certain Baptist statement of faith was adequately trinitarian. I think the question came from somebody who didn’t know the Baptist heritage very well, and was just doing his best to understand the words of the words of the statement of faith. The…
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Happy Birthday, J.B. Lightfoot
Today (April 13) was the birthday of J.B. Lightfoot (1828-1889), Bishop of Durham, New Testament commentator, historian of early Christianity, and Christian apologist. Lightfoot’s strict classical training (Trinity College, Cambridge) equipped him for what turned out to be his life’s work in an uncannily providential way. In all his scholarly work, it has been said…
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Happy Birthday, Samuel Zwemer
Samuel Marinus Zwemer (1867-1952) was born this day, April 12. Zwemer has been called “the Apostle to Islam” by many people, including a historian of missions as great Kenneth Scott Latourette. He worked in frontier missions in a variety of ways, willing to go anywhere there were Muslims and to use any technique that was…
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Happy Birthday James Orr
Scottish theologian James Orr (1844–1913) was born on this day, April 11. He was a prolific author and an important figure in conservative evangelicalism at the very beginning of the twentieth century. Orr wrote at a time when everything seemed to be flying apart: historical-critical studies of the Bible were reaching a sort of critical…
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The Life Book and High School Evangelism
You may have seen the little ad in our rightmost column, for “a quick way to change someone’s life forever,” with one hand taking a tract from another. That ad is for something called The Life Book, a remarkable little evangelistic tool designed for high school evangelism. The main thing about the Life Book is…
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Boethius according to C.S. Lewis
In 1962, C.S. Lewis made a “ten books that have influenced me most” list at the request of The Christian Century. Read it here. (He agreed to do this even though, in a letter to Clyde Kilby in 1958, he had worried that publishing anything whatsoever in the Century “may merely be putting up the…
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Kittens in the Air
Phoebe Age 7 combines word and image in this celebratory ode. That stylized text is: Kittens in the air Catnip in there lair Soreing over beare And you can see the beare over which they are soreing. The kittens are supported in their soreing project by a colorful assortment of birds. What with the catnip…
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Review of Peter Leithart’s Deep Exegesis
In 1841, John Henry Newman wrote the following in his Tract 90, Remarks on Certain Passages in the Thirty-Nine Articles: “Two important questions, however, [the 39 Articles] does not settle, viz. whether the Church judges, first, at her sole discretion; next, on her sole responsibility, i. e. first, what the media are by which the…
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Go To The Ant
Not long ago my whole family listened to a remarkable audio book. It’s a reading of Evelyn Sibley Lampman’s 1960 The City Under the Back Steps. It’s a great adventure story about two kids who get shrunk to bug size, and spend a few days working and fighting alongside the members of an ant colony.…