The first day of April this year brings the announcement in Japan that that country’s calendar cycle is about to re-set to Year One. The matter is obscure outside of Japan itself and its immediate neighbors, but you can see the option for a Japanese calendar—cued to the beginning of each emperor’s reign—on iPhones and […]
Lent Doesn’t Make Sense When Incarnation > Salvation
Instinct and revelation do not typically occupy the same space. For a revelation reveals truth that we otherwise would miss. In this regard, religion is most interesting when it offers ideas that are distinct and/or counterintuitive, when it brings something new to bear upon the old. In particular, the idea that God cares for the […]
The Economics of the Incarnation
I don’t like the axiom, “Remember the reason for season.” While the commercialization of Christmas has superseded the meaning of the season, it’s not society’s job to get the season right — it’s the church’s. Instead of getting irate over a culture that fails to appreciate what Christmas means, perhaps it’s time to look in […]
Chameleon Jesus
Throwing in some last minute thoughts about Christmas before tree burning commences. With the incarnation, God is presented as man, a man. That is part of the humiliation of Christ’s life. In other words, the cross begins at Christmas, when the second person of the Trinity is presented into a world of gravity and cold sores, where […]
“You Descended from the Stars”: Christmas and Salvation from the Stars
Another great post from Michael Nicholson, looking at the far reaches of the stars and the farther reaches of God through the lens of sci-fi film. Enjoy! You descended from the stars, O king of heaven, and came to a cave, in the frosty cold. ~ Tu scendi dalle stelle, 18th cent. Italian Christmas carol […]
Bridging the Empathy Gap: Pap’s New Judge and a Man from Nazareth
This piece on empathy comes from our friend (the inimitable) Michael Bender: Grace in the face of alcoholism is not a new theme on Mbird, but I thought I might add to the literature with a brief anecdote from Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. At the beginning of the novel, Huckleberry spends some time […]
Augustine on the Word Becoming Flesh
Here are some poetic words from Saint Augustine’s Sermon 69: On the same words, John 1: “In the beginning was the Word, etc.” excerpted from the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers edited by Philip Schaff. There are some beautiful lines here on the Incarnation—the Word of God becoming flesh—that could make this a Christmas sermon. Do not follow […]
Kierkegaard on Erotic Love, Divine Sorrow and True Imputation
We’re embarking on one of Kierkegaard’s bizarre thought-experiments here, on the love of God in Christ. It’s anthropomorphic, it’s controversial, and it’s all possibly a crock of you-know-what…but it’s deeply moving and, to this blogger’s mind, it brings out some brilliant aspects of God’s love and imputation’s reality. God’s eternal motive with regard to man […]
Flannery O’Connor on Emotional Jellyfish and the Repulsiveness of Truth (and Incarnation)
From the collection of her letters, The Habit of Being, pgs 99-100, ht WH: I can never agree with you that the Incarnation, or any truth, has to satisfy emotionally to be right (and I would not agree that for the natural man the Incarnation does not satisfy emotionally). It does not satisfy emotionally for […]
