Today (October 11) is the anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962. Vatican II meant a lot of things to Roman Catholics on the ground (from changes in practices of fasting, to rumors that everything was about to blow wide open), but here is a theological overview of this epochal Roman Catholic event, as reported by Avery Dulles and Walter Kasper, accord...
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Today (June 2) is the day King Aethelbert of Kent was baptized into the Christian faith by Augustine of Canterbury in the year 597.
Bede tells us that Aethelbert "was the third English king to become High-King (Bretwalda) of all the provinces south of the river Humber, but he was the first to enter the kingdom of heaven." So for anybody who wants to trace British Christian...
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Today (April 19) is the anniversary of the 1529 Protestation of Speyer, which is generally regarded as the first time that the word "Protestant" was used to refer to a religious position distinct from Roman Catholicism. A coalition of German princes and leaders refused to abide by the imperial ban on Luther's teachings, and called instead for the free spread of gospel teaching ...
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Algernon Crapsey worshiped telegraph poles, but that's both better and worse than it sounds.
It was April 18 in the year 1906 that Reverend Algernon Sidney Crapsey (1847-1927) was put on trial by the Episcopal Church in the state of New York for teaching, preaching and writing contrary to the Christian faith. He was found guilty, and was removed from the ministry.
In his...
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Pope Formosus (born around 816, died April 4, 896), only served for 5 years in the office of Pope, and they were troubled years. Formosus inherited an unstable political situation, and took the wrong side in the dispute between warring kings in a disintegrating Christendom.
In 894, he asked King Arnulf of the Franks to defend Rome against various attackers, but chiefly aga...
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Today (December 27) is the birthday of Charles Hodge (1797-1878), who deserves a place on the short list of greatest American theologians. His reputation precedes him, making it hard to know what to write about him: Backbone of Princeton orthodoxy, pillar of Reformed theology, icon of Protestant principle, author of the influential 3-volume Systematic Theology, etc.
Hodge i...
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Too many people think of the Reformation as a one-man show, with Martin Luther starting everything by himself. But even if you stick to the first generation of the Reformation, and confine yourself to Germany, there were still a lot of faithful and creative people involved at all levels of reforming the church. Consider Friedrich Myconius (1490-1546), who was born on this day ...
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He was born on December 25, 1766, so his parents named him Christmas. He was a tough kid (a farm worker who remained illiterate well into his teenage years), but he became a Christian at age 17, and grew up to become famous as "the one-eyed preacher of Wales." The Encyclopedia Brittanica entry on him notes that "his chief characteristic was a vivid and affluent imagination, wh...
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Today (December 24) is the anniversary of the death of Albert Barnes (1798-1870), the American pastor remembered for his popular commentary on the Bible, Barnes' Notes. Barnes pastored for over 40 years at the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, and generated thousand of pages of commentaries. He has been called "the most prolific commentator of his generation," and he ...
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H. C. G. (that’s Handley Carr Glyn) Moule was born on this day (December 23) in 1841 and died in 1920. Laurels? Moule had them aplenty. A Cambridge man (Trinity College 1864, where he was also fellow from 1865 to 1881 and dean from 1873-1877), he was the first principal of Ridley Hall (1881-1899) and Norrisian Professor of Divinity at Cambridge (1899-1901). Moule then served...
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Today (December 22) is the day in 1899 when Dwight L. Moody died. The Christian world was devastated by the passing of this evangelical giant. Moody had been the figurehead for the aggressive, revivalist evangelicalism of the nineteenth century, and when he died just ten days from the end of the century, it seemed symbolic. At his funeral, A. T. Pierson said:
When a great ...
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Today (December 20) is the birthday of Edwin Abbott Abbott (1838-1926), the English scholar remembered now as the author of Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. A pleasant, short, and stimulating work, Flatland is a great little mental workout that helps you imagine the jump from lower dimensions to higher.
It's the story of a square, living in his two-dimensional world,...
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