6/29/2018

Augustine’s City of God is a tour de force, tracing the pilgrim City of God’s movement among the ungodly. Augustine examines the course of the two cities created by two loves. “The one, therefore, glories in itself, the other in the Lord; the one seeks glory from men, the other finds its highest glory in God, the Witness of our conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, “Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.” (XIV,28)

5/15/2018

George Marsden has not written a biography of a person, but the life of a book. His biography of Mere Christianity is one of a series, “Lives of Great Religious Books” published by Princeton University Press. Included in the series are “biographies” of Augustine’s Confessions, Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, Calvin’s Institutes, and Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, as well as other religious classics.

4/4/2018

The sacraments have been referred to as “means of grace.” The term has fallen out of theological fashion because it is ambiguous and open to misunderstanding. Are Baptism and Eucharist instruments of grace? vehicles of grace? conveyors of grace? elicitors of grace? symbols of grace? reminders of grace? Do sacraments do something, or do they mean something, or do they indicate something, are they solely something?

3/6/2018

The 500^th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation has come and gone, with little fanfare and minimal observance. It is worth noting that 2017 was the anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

2/12/2018