To Think God as Love

In a sermon rooted in Mark 16.8, O’Donovan remarks, Saint Mark is no elegant stone lion, like those you see all over Venice. His prey is his readers, and as he seizes us, he roars. There is divine violence in Mark. He does not think that we can meet God without our thigh being thrown out of [...]

“Let no one fear death, for the Saviour’s death has set us free. He who was held by death, eradicated death. He plundered Hades when He descended into Hades. He embittered it, when it tasted of His flesh, and this being foretold by Isaiah when he cried: Hades said it was embittered, when it encountered [...]

This raises a question for you: what would you have done differently, and why? 

The History of God In the beginning, there was the Word. And then, the Word-made-flesh. After that, there was the dying of the Word-made-flesh. And the being dead. In the end, there was – and ever is – the Word-made-new-flesh. This is our hope and salvation: the history of God.

“What the dogmatic doctrine of the two natures termed ‘Christ’s divinity’ really means is Jesus as ‘only begotten Son’ in his exlusiveness and uniqueness. What is called ‘Christ’s humanity’ really has to do with Jesus as ‘the first-born among many brethren’. For the one person of Jesus Christ is not a matter of two metaphysically [...]

  Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body; if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall.

I. “To Think God as Love” Jungel has said the task of theology is to think God as love. But he doesn’t leave this predicate, “love,” in abstraction. It is the resurrected crucified Jesus who is the content of this predicate. We know what love is when we see Jesus, when he becomes present to [...]

In this lecture, Randy Maddox, professor of theology and Wesleyan studies at Duke, irenically yet effectively exposes the tragic (is that too strong a word?) errors of the dispensational premillenialism encoded in the text of the Left Behind series. Importantly, he has actually read all of the books in their entirety! This is a must [...]

“Heaven does not simply await the martyr in another space and time upon his or her death. Instead, the martyr brings a foretaste of the not yet fully consummated kingdom to earth. In the book of Revelation, the martyrs are vindicated by the descent of the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven [...]

From a sermon on the two “admirers” who unknowingly meet Jesus on the Emmaus road: However, as they proceed on their way to Emmaus, instructing Jesus along the way, it is remarkable that they do not recognize who he is. We tend to blame them for this, but perhaps we are far too quick. We are not talking ’regular stuff’ here. [...]

This is the good news of Easter:  But the goodness of the resurrection news is most evident for those who have lost people they love to any sort of incomprehensible evil – the tragedies of dementia, the apparent meaninglessness of accident, the horrors of violence or injustice.

“People condemned God to death; with His Resurrection He condemned them to immortality. For striking Him, God returned embraces; for insults, blessings; for death, immortality. Never did men show more hate towards God than when they crucified Him; and God never showed His love towards people more than when He was resurrected. Mankind wanted to [...]

I’ve recently come upon the ideas and work of the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, in part due to poserorprophet. Also recently, I heard Zizek’s brief but brilliant commentary on Alfonso Cuaron’s film, Children of Men. My interest piqued, I sought out some of Zizek’s writing – he is deliriously prolific, it turns out – and [...]