TheoFaith

The title of this post is an aphorism attributed to St. Augustine.  For the life of me however I can't find the citation.  Even with the help of google and a pretty big early church fathers library in Logos I just can't seem to track this down.  If you know where it is let me know!  Nevertheless, I think it is a pretty good quote. What I like about it is both its simplicity and its symmetry.  Simple works for me.  I have plenty  of complicated things in my life as it is so when something simple comes along I grab on to it.  After all, it is just seven short words that have a kind of rhythm when you say them out loud.  Even I can remember these words. The symmetry is in how the two clauses work together.  When you first hear this you might think great!  I can do whatever I darn well want as long as I love God.  But wait a second. What does it mean to love God anyway? In our emotion laden culture we might reduce "love" to som...

The Bible starts with a simple but attention getting phrase, "In the beginning".  If you do a little digging and take a look at the Hebrew word that phrase translates you will find that it designates the start of a period of time.  In other words "in the beginning" is the start of a segment of time that will eventually end.  So, implicit in those opening words of the Bible is that there will be an ending.  Between "In the beginning" and the end is what we call history. History, as far as the Bible is concerned, if purposeful, meaningful, and heading toward a conclusion. In his excellent book The End : A Complete Overview of Bible Prophecy and the End of Days (click on that link so you can hop over to Amazon on get a copy) Mark Hitchcock writes that history is not and endless series of reincarnations, and that the world will not just go on forever through unending cycles of history (p. 9).  Instead, God has a goal in mind and that goal is to bring glo...

Everyone starts somewhere, and starting points abound. Each life begins at the starting point of conception. Each new day dawns full of hope and anticipation. Marriage, a new semester, a new job, a new exercise routine, a new diet are all starting points of one kind or another. Each starting point allows us to set or renew our intention and direction. The ancient Hebrew wisdom in the Book of Proverbs reminds us that foundational to any starting point is the fear of the Lord. In other words the starting point of all starting points is to Fear God. Fear is not something that we readily embrace. In fact, it is something we do our best to avoid.  That is of course unless you like roller coasters or skydiving. Yet the Bible tells us to embrace the fear of God. What does it mean to fear God? It is simply to acknowledge that He exists.  To know God is to fear Him. But why, is He mean or vindictive? No, He is good but He is not predictable. A real God will do as He please...

In my post titled "Create not Make" I made the point that God was the creator of everything and therefore has the right to rule over it.  I want to build a little on that point here. God’s creation of the land as the basis for His right to do with it as He pleases is apparent in Is. 44:1 and 24.  In v. 1 God is the maker of Israel. Then in v. 24 God asserts He is Israel’s “Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, I the Lord, am the maker of all things”. His making of the nation and of all things intrinsically carries the prerogative of sovereignty giving Him the sole right to first chasten Israel, then restore them to the land that He made.  Similarly in Is. 45:12—18 God who “made the earth, and created man upon it” (v. 12) has the intrinsic right to sovereignly do as He wishes with all the nations.  Therefore, these verses assert, that because God has created the earth He has the intrinsic right to sovereignly do what He will with the earth (Is. 44:3a, 7,...

Over the weekend I listened to an interview with Mike Licona and Richard Burridge on the Unbelivable? Podcast.   Burridge is Dean of Kings College London and Licona clearly identified himself as a Burridge fanboy.   At about the 14:30 mark in the Podcast Burridge makes the outlandish statement that inerrancy is a 19 th century heresy! Of course, this would have been a shock to Jesus who in Mt. 5:17—18 said that even the smallest letters of the Hebrew scriptures would be fulfilled.   He might have saved Himself some embarrassment if He had known that the idea that the scriptures were preserved down to the jot and tittle was actually a heresy. Of course, Jesus’ detractors would have been happy since in Mt. 22:32 Jesus was trying to reason with them on the basis of the tense of the Hebrew verb.   Also in Mt. 22:44 Jesus has hanging His argument on one of those small Hebrew letters that makes the difference between “Lord” and “My Lord”. It is a wonder that His ...

The Corinthians were the real deal. Jesus told Paul to keep on preaching in the city because He had many people in Corinth (Acts. 18:9—10). So Paul stayed there for 18 months and personally established the church in that city. So when Paul wrote to them from Ephesus (1 Cor 16:8) he knew what he was talking about when he wrote: “ I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, so that you are not lacking in any gift , awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, ” (1 Corinthians 1:4–7) .  They were extraordinarily gifted. Yet to be successful in ministry giftedness is not enough. Just a few pages later in 1 Cor. 3:1 we see what Paul says to this same gathering of incredibly gifted people: “And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to i...