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7 things the Lord hates (spoiler: questioning doctrine isn't one of them)

...en before Jesus, the Psalmist declared, "O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him" (Ps 34:8) — that's a challenge right there to do something, to actually try your faith and see that God is there and real. This faith is a demonstrable one. But I digress. As to the title of this post: Proverbs 6:16-19 There are six things that the Lord hates,    seven that are an abomination to him:haughty eyes, a lying tongue,    and hands that shed innocent blood,a heart that devises wicked plans,    feet that hurry to run to...

Understanding The New Testament: Inspiration, Canonisation, And Historical Context

...isquoting Jesus, If he (Bruce Metzger) and I were put in a room and asked to hammer out a consensus statement on what we think the original text of the New Testament probably looked like, there would be very few points of disagreement — maybe one or two dozen out of many thousands. … [T]he essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament. The flawed view of inspiration as a series of momentary “supernatural writing sessions” creates an expectation that anything “spiritual” written by an apostle or associate had to be preserved. This mindset suggests that missing letters indicate...

What is Monarchical Trinitarianism?

...ation. As Jesus said in John 5:19–23, “the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.”, similar also to how Jesus said that only the Father knows the hour of the End, and that the Son doesn’t know (Mark 13:32). The One True God Central to Monarchical Trinitarianism is the recognition of the Father as the One True God, or άυτόθεος (autotheos), meaning self-existent. He is the uncaused, unbegotten source of divinity, from whom the Son and the Spirit derive their being. The early Fathers were clear that this does not diminish the divinity of the Son and the Spirit bu...

Lent: Day 7 - Ignatius to the Trallians

...Day Seven: St. Ignatius of Antioch: Letter to the Trallians (full text) Who: Ignatius converted at a young age and later became Bishop of Antioch. A friend of Polycarp and fellow disciple of John, there is a long standing tradition that Ignatius was the child that Jesus held in his arms and blessed in Mark 10:13-16 What: Ignatius urges the church to continue in unity and to honour their leadership. This letter also gives a defence against certain heresies. Why: Ignatius wrote a series of letters to the churches in Asia Minor whilst en route to Rome to face martyrdom by wild beasts in the Colosseum around 108 AD. When: Around 107-108 AD The letter to the Tr...

Lent: Day 10 - Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans

...Day Ten: St. Ignatius of Antioch: Letter to the Smyrnaeans (full text) Who: Ignatius converted at a young age and later became Bishop of Antioch. A friend of Polycarp and fellow disciple of John, there is a long standing tradition that Ignatius was the child that Jesus held in his arms and blessed in Mark 10:13-16 What: A defence against the heresy of Docetism and an intriguing insight into the possible origins of evil spirits! Why: Ignatius wrote a series of letters to the churches in Asia Minor whilst en route to Rome to face martyrdom by wild beasts in the Colosseum around 108 AD. When: Around 107-108 AD The opening chapters of this letter pulls no punc...

Ancient Amulet Rewrites History Of Christianity In Europe

...New discovery proclaims Jesus as “Son of God” a century earlier than previously thought. An exciting archaeological discovery has recently come to light: researchers have unearthed an 1800-year-old silver amulet in Frankfurt, Germany. This amulet provides the earliest known evidence of Christianity north of the Alps and disrupts previously held ideas about the spread of the faith, namely that Christianity didn’t get to the German region around the fourth century. The amulet, dating from approximately 230 to 270 AD, was found in 2018 beneath the chin of a man’s skeleton during excavations at a Roman burial site near the former town of Nida, now part o...