13 Sep 2018
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
God changes us over time. That change begins with the lesson--which may take a lifetime to learn in the way that it really needs to be learned--that the first thing we must do is to give up trying to justify, or vindicate, ourselves. Abandoning the desire for self-justification is the necessary precondition...
Read more → 13 Sep 2018
Posted by Steven Wedgeworth 
We are continuing our look at the way the early church organized itself. You can see the earlier posts here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. This post will highlight some of the more important development that would eventually lead to the Roman Catholic claims about the relationship between Peter and Rome's...
Read more → 11 Sep 2018
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
Augustine talks a lot about moms in the Confessions: particularly his own mother and the church as the mother of the faithful--though not Mary. This is unsurprising, because Augustine knows nothing of Marian devotion. But it is not only the church who is the mother of believers; Scripture is, too....
Read more → 06 Sep 2018
Posted by Steven Wedgeworth 
We are continuing our series on the identity and government of the Christian Church and how it relates to the claims of the Roman Catholic Church. My first post explained why this question is freshly relevant and urgent for Roman Catholics, and it laid out the Roman Catholic claims about how the Christian...
Read more → 27 Jul 2018
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
"Literalism" frequently gets a bad rap nowadays when it comes to the Bible. The word "literal" is fraught with ambiguities, especially in its modern usages, which I have no intention of getting into here. But the practice of reading the Bible ad litteram--"according to the natural sense of the words,"...
Read more → 19 Jun 2018
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
John 6.22ff. is a text that has long been used in various ways and to various ends in debates about the Eucharist. Christ himself gives a clue to its proper interpretation in v. 63: "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is of no avail. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life" (ESV)....
Read more → 29 May 2018
Posted by Steven Wedgeworth 
Athanasius of Alexandria's doctrine of the deity of Christ rest upon two basic concepts. These are that the divine nature is simple and incapable of division and that the Son is generated or begotten from the essence of the Father, that divine essence which is simple. When you combine these two concepts,...
Read more → 28 May 2018
Posted by Steven Wedgeworth 
Athanasius of Alexandria actually has a lot to say about the divine nature. He says that it is fruitful. He says that its essence and its existence are identical. He says that it is simple and infinite. And yet, he also says that the divine nature is, in itself, unknowable to us. We have nothing with...
Read more → 25 May 2018
Posted by Steven Wedgeworth
In an most interesting section of his Orations Against the Arians, Athanasius fields an objection against the eternal generation of the Son based on a parallel with creation. Athanasius has been arguing that certain divine names (Father, Wisdom, Word) show us that God must have always had a second hypostasis...
Read more → 07 May 2018
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
The following passage is so over-quoted that I hesitate to quote it again (I discuss the general idea in an essay in this book), but I'm going to do it anyway to make just one tiny little point. That point is this: though Aristotle is enjoying something of a renaissance among "conservative" Christian...
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