The best ideas are common property
A pilgrim in Castile and León, en route to Santiago de Compostela. In J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers, the hobbits Frodo and Sam attempt to cross a treacherous swamp called the Dead Marshes. Their guide is Gollum, who murderously craves the Ring of Power that Frodo carries. Apparently reformed, Gollum has promised to lead the …
Continue reading "Less power, more grace: final words on creeds"
Delegates celebrating unity at the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches, Karlsruhe, Germany, September 2022. In my last post, I outlined three core purposes of creeds. Here, I outline four more purposes of creeds that guarantee their enduring relevance for the church. First, creeds serve an apologetic purpose. While Judaism has the Shema, Muslims have the Shahadah and Tashahhud, and some …
Ancient Jerusalem as painted by James Tissot, ca. 1890. The writers of the four canonical Gospels arranged their texts with purpose in mind. It has been said that, for Luke, “theology does not so much order narrative as arise from it.”[1] If this is true, the structure of Luke’s story of the life of Jesus is …
The New Testament letter to the Hebrews bears no author’s name. The arguments and themes of the document suggest that the author was a gifted theologian of the stature of contemporaries such as the apostles Paul and John. The first generation of readers, some of whom may have personally known the author, did not add …
iDigress 