I’ve been working on my Trinities book today, and have been reading a lot of Origen (d. c. 253) lately. As is well known, most of his famous On First Principles (kindle, hardback) has been lost in the original Greek, but we have a “complete” copy of a Latin translation made by Rufinus of Aquileia (d. 410) in 398-9. Unfortunately, this translation was made in… Read More »Rufinus’s corruption of Origen’s On First Principles – Part 1
Many thanks to my fellow bloggers Bill Vallicella and Aiden Kimel for their thoughtful posts on the discussion/debate between Bill and me on whether God is to be thought of as a unique and perfect being, or not a being, but rather “Being itself” or “Existence.” I was simply not able to keep up, due to travel and other immediate demands. For those following the… Read More »Dialogue with the Maverick Philosopher: God is a being, not Being itself – part 3
Mr. Kermit Zarley is a retired professional golfer and Christian author, having written books on christology and eschatology. In this episode he describes being born again as a teen, his evangelical identity, and his discovery that in the New Testament, Jesus and God are two, namely the human Son of God (Jesus) and the one true God, Yahweh (aka the Father).
What is heresy? Sometimes “heresy” is the name of a sin. More often, it is supposed to be a certain sort of belief, claim, or teaching. In this talk, I outline four different Christian approaches to thinking about heretics and heresy – to dropping such “H-Bombs.”
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”… Read More »He is risen!
Dr. Oliver Crisp’s Deviant Calvinism: Broadening Reformed Theology (kindle) has been blessed with excellent publicity. In several places, you can read or hear Dr. Crisp’s thoughts on the book, and get a good sense of what it is about. In the most recent episode of the trinities podcast, I discuss with him just how broad he thinks the Reformed tradition is. Next week we get… Read More »Deviant Calvinism roundup 1 – Crisp on Crisp
This time, some questions that may occur to you about Clarke’s views on the Trinity.
This time, another great Christian thinker, who I discovered some time around 1998.
Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy – its effect on my thinking.
At The Anxious Bench, eminent historian Dr. Philip Jenkins has a nice basic summary of Philo’s merging of Platonic theology with that of the Hebrew Bible. This summary fits nicely with the one I quoted towards the end of episode 76 of the trinities podcast. Dr. Jenkins says, in part: Having excluded God from the world, though, Philo used a Stoic concept to bring him… Read More »Philip Jenkins on Philo’s theology
How does Justin argue from Genesis that even when the world was created, there were two Lords?
When it came to christology, what did Justin Martyr consider essential, as in, you’re not a Christian unless you believe it? The answers may surprise you. In this episode we explore the christology of Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho.
“…what purpose God made man himself. As He contrived the world for the sake of man, so He formed man himself on His own account, as it were a priest of a divine temple, a spectator of His works and of heavenly objects. For he is the only being who, since he is intelligent and capable of reason, is able to understand God, to admire… Read More »Lactantius on why God made us
Has anyone ever seen God himself? The Bible seems to both affirm and deny this. In Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, Justin claims that the “God” seen in any Old Testament theophany was not the one God, the Creator (i.e. the Father)…
At Christianity Today, some Christian scholars fondly remember the recently deceased Dr. Marcus Borg, liberal Bible scholar. Dr. Ben Witherington praises him as a “Christian churchman.” I guess I have no objection to that description, so long as we supplement it with this observation: Dr. Borg was a longtime atheist, who had moved from monotheism to agnosticism to atheism, like so many. It’s just that… Read More »Marcus Borg’s atheism
What did the famous Justin Martyr teach about Proverbs 8, and why?
Do our earliest surviving post-New-Testament writings interpret Proverbs 8 as being about the pre-human Jesus?
“The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.” Is this famous passage in Proverbs 8 about the pre-human Jesus?
This is a guest post by Mr. Mario Stratta, a frequent commenter on this blog. He works in electronic engineering in Italy, and blogs on theological topics as “Miguel de Servet” at beliefnet. – Dale In the OT we find an obscure reference to the “eternal arms” of God: “The everlasting God is a refuge, and underneath [you] are [his] eternal arms …” (Deut 33:27)… Read More »Word and Spirit: the “Everlasting Arms” of God
Leading scholar Dr. Richard Bauckham has done a public service by chewing thoroughly through the “Lost Gospel”: Dr. Mark Goodacre has posted Dr. Bauckham’s article(s) here. Let’s just say, he determines that it is all bun and no meat. A few teasers: They seem to be proposing a unique genre of ancient literature. Why should we believe them? It seems to be simply a way of getting… Read More »a real scholar on the so-called “Lost Gospel”