Here’s a fabulous time-lapse map of Europe from approximately AD 1000 to 2003. It’s a great visual aid for understanding the shifting borders and alliances that have shaped Europe for the last thousand years or so.
HT Tim Challies
Archive - Church History
RSS Feed
Is Learning Greek and Hebrew Really Worth It?
My latest post over at the Transformed blog deals with the biblical languages and whether seminary students really need to spend all that time learning them. Here’s the beginning of the post. You’ll have to head over to Transformed to read the rest.
First, a confession. I like languages. I always have. There’s something fun about unraveling a new language, pulling the pieces apart, learning how it works, and then trying to put it back together again. It’s like a puzzle just waiting to be solved. It’s not easy, and like most puzzles it can be pretty frustrating. But I still enjoy it.
Not everyone agrees.
For many, learning a new language is an exhausting, frustrating, and spirit-killing endeavor, one that has been scientifically proven to cause premature hair loss, marital discord, excess book throwing, and, in small rodents, cancer. So it should come as no surprise that many wonder if it’s really worth it. Should I really invest that much time and that many brain cells in learning these languages? Isn’t that why we have translations in the first place?
Read the rest here.
Ascending to God: Calvin’s Theology of Participation
Sometimes a book sits on my “to read” list for a while, and, when I finally get around to reading it, I’m disappointed. Fortunately, this wasn’t one of those times. When I finally made time to dig into Julie Canlis’ Calvin’s Ladder: A Spiritual Theology of Ascent and Ascension, I immediately wished I had done so earlier. Well-written and thoughtful, this is definitely a book worth reading.
According to Canlis, concepts like participation, fellowship, and communion, lie at the heart of the Christian faith. We are “in Christ,” “partakers of the divine nature,” and joined together in “one body.” These are key ideas, and how we understand them necessarily shapes how we view things like what it means to be human, how we approach spirituality, and what we think about God himself.
But we struggle to understand what this “participation” theme really means for at least two reasons. First, our modern, western culture is so individualized and atomized that we struggle to see ourselves as anything other than isolated selves. That makes it difficult for us to process the idea that the ground of our identity – indeed, our very being – may lie outside of us. And second, ”participation” has been understood by theologians in two very different ways. Some see our participation in God as an ontological reality – to be “in Christ” is to share in the divine nature itself. Others suspect this ontological approach of bordering on pantheism (i.e. we are part of God) and prefer to view participation as simply referring to the fact that believers share in the benefits of being God’s people.
A Prayer for Sunday (Anselm of Canterbury)
Yesterday was the anniversary of the death of St. Anselm of Canterbury (April 21, 1109). Born in Italy, Anselm served as a monk in northern France for more than thirty years before becoming the Archbishop of Canterbury. Anselm is best known as one of the great theological minds of the Middle Ages, but he as also actively involved in church reform and the investiture controversy.
So in honor of Anselm’s life and ministry, this week’s prayer comes from him.
O my God, teach my heart where and how to seek You,where and how to find You..You are my God and You are my all and I have never seen You.You have made me and remade me,You have bestowed on me all the good things I possess,Still I do not know You..I have not yet done that for which I was made.Teach me to seek You.I have not yet done that for which I was made.Teach me to seek You.I cannot seek You unless You teach meor find You unless You show Yourself to me..Let me seek You in my desire,let me desire You in my seeking.Let me find You by loving You,let me love You when I find You.
Amen
A Prayer for Sunday (Thomas Aquinas)
In just a few days, we will mark the anniversary of the death of Thomas Aquinas (March 7, 1274), one of the great theologians of the medieval church, indeed of any era. To commemorate his passing, here’s a prayer from him:
O Lord my God, help me to be
obedient without reserve,
poor without servility,
chaste without compromise,
humble without pretense,
joyful without depravity,
serious without affectation,
active without frivolty,
submissive without bitterness,
truthful without duplicity,
fruitful in good works without presumption,
quick to revive my neighbor without haughtiness,
and quick to edify others by word and example without simulation.
A Prayer for Sunday (Martin Luther)
In honor of the fact that yesterday marked the anniversary of Martin Luther’s death (February 18, 1546), today’s prayer comes from him.
Look, Lord, an empty vessel that needs to be filled. My Lord, fill it.
I am weak in the faith; strengthen me.
I am cold in love; warm me and make me fervent, that my love may go out to my neighbor.
I do not have a strong and firm faith. At times I doubt and am unable to trust You completely. O Lord, help me. Strengthen my faith and trust in You.
I have insured all my treasure in Your name.
I am poor; You are rich and You did come to be merciful to the poor.
I am a sinner; You are upright.
With me there is an abundance of sin; with You a fullness of righteousness.
Therefore I will remain with You, from whom I can receive but to whom I may not give. Amen.
Martin Luther, Luther’s Prayers, ed. Herbert Brokering (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1994), no. 91, 67-8.
Martin Luther’s Last Days and Final Thoughts
On February 18, 1546 Martin Luther lived his last hours. Although he’d been struggling with old age and ill health for a while, Luther spent the end of 1545 trying to resolve an inheritance dispute in the town of Eisleben. On January 17, 1546 he preached his final sermon in Wittenberg, and then he traveled back to Eisleben with his three sons to continue working on that conflict. I find it striking that for a person with a reputation for controversy and polemics, he spent his last days working toward harmony and reconciliation.
Arriving in Eisleben, though still in ill heath, Luther preached four more sermons – his last.
Continuing a life-long tendency to downplay his own importance, two days before his death, Luther said,
If I make it home to Wittenberg, I will lay myself in my coffin to let maggots feast on the stout Doctor.
Jesus Is So Lucky to Have Us
I’ve been meaning to post this one for a while now. It’s a nice corollary to my Charting Church History from a Baptist Perspective. And it’s just funny. (Of course, it’s funny in that awkward people-actually-think-that-way kind of funny. But still.)
A Prayer for Sunday: Praying with Zossima and Dostoevsky
[This is a guest post from Michael Fletcher.]
My favorite author is Fyodor Dostoevsky (aside from Saint Athanasius and the authors of the Bible). I highly recommend that you read, at minimum, two of his novels: The Brothers Karamazov and Crime & Punishment (note: the two links are FREE Kindle downloads, and Kindle apps are available for free on computers and phones! You have no excuses!) In these two books you find amazing theological themes of sin, grace, justice, mercy, salvation, etc. Reading Dostoevsky is truly a spiritual exercise for me and I wish I could devote more of my time to reading his works. In the Brothers K, Father Zossima is the character who gives many words of Orthodox wisdom — especially to Alyosha, one of the Brothers who is told to live the life of a monk in the world by taking a wife. I wish Dostoevsky had survived long enough to finish the sequel to this book so that he could explain the latter part of Alyosha’s life! However, Fyodor’s time came to an end on February 9th, 1881. I wish to share an excerpt from The Brothers Karamazov (p.293). In this quote, Father Zossima teaches us on the necessity of prayer, I hope that it brings you hope and encourages you to pray:
“Who Am I?” (a poem by Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born February 4, 1906. Who was Deitrich Bonhoeffer? Was he a spy? a martyr? a theologian? a musician? a genius? a pastor? This list could keep going, but would never end. Not even Bonhoeffer could answer the question of who he was. This is a poem which he wrote, I pray that it helps you understand Bonhoeffer, and yourself, to a fuller extent.
“Who am I?”
Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
like a Squire from his country-house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly,
as though it were mine to command.
