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God from God: The Eternal Son in the Crib

How can God beget a Son? Does that mean Jesus is His creation? This question comes sharply into focus during Advent, when the Church contemplates the Incarnation: the eternal Son entering the world as a baby in Mary’s womb. And to understand this, we turn to language the Church has treasured for centuries — especially that crucial distinction between begotten and created. And C. S. Lewis describes this with a real concise clarity: We don’t use the words begetting or begotten much in modern English, but everyone still knows what they mean. To beget is to become the father of: to create is to make. And the difference is this. When you beget, you beget...

Kirk Cameron And The Biblical Case For Annihilationism

...re Gospel truth and secondary doctrinal frameworks. The reality of judgement is not at stake. The authority of Scripture is not at stake. The Lordship of Christ is not at stake. What is at stake is whether the church can still have careful, reverent, Scripture-led conversations without panicking whenever a familiar assumption is questioned. Whether we can take a moment to pause, take a breath, and actually check our sources before reaction and forming opinions, instead of basing everything on a single image quote on social media. Annihilationism does not make God less just, less holy, or less serious about sin. For many of us who have come to embrace it after...

Lent: Day 8 - Ignatius to the Romans

...g out the truth of the Gospel of willingly laying down his life for God, even in the face of a horrendous death by wild animals! It reminds me of one of my favourite Scriptures, a similar situation actually, when Paul is bound and on his way to Jerusalem to face death and he says: Acts 20:24But I do not count my life of any value to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the good news of God’s grace. This right here sums up everything Ignatius is saying and desires. His resolve is steadfast, even with the opportunity to get out of this situation via help from the Roman church. I wonder h...

Lent Day 24: Athanasius: Life of Anthony: Chaps. 31-40

...speak the truth, let no one marvel at them for this. Just as those who study the weather, or doctors who study the body, get to know the symptoms and patterns so as to be able to predict with some accuracy what is happening before it does, no one would say these know this by inspiration, “but from experience and practice”. In the same way these demons also operate. Should we desire to know the future, desire to use the gifts of the Spirit, as Paul encouraged (1 Cor 14:1,5), then it should be through our discipline to God to keep ourselves pure so that when our “soul is perfectly pure and in its natural state, it is able, being clear-sighted, to see mor...

Lent Day 27: Athanasius: Life of Anthony: Chaps. 61-70

...rt to the truth. He also despised the Arians and their heresy, and warned that none should go near them nor hold to their belief. But at one point, certain “madmen” came to him so that he could learn of their doctrine more, Anthony drove them away saying their “words were worse than the poison of serpent”! After this, some more Arians went about and lied saying that Anthony agreed with their doctrine. On hearing this, all of the bishops and other brethren summoned Anthony to Alexandria to be questioned about it. He denounced the heresy as something antichrist and defended the divinity it Christ, saying, …the Son of God was not a created being, n...

Lent Day 30: Cyril of Jerusalem: Catechetical Lectures: Lecture XIX

...way, the truth and the life? I come to Christ. And this is the text from Cyril’s lecture which I’ve compiled into one paragraph of liturgy for easier reading: I renounce thee, Satan and all thy works. And all his pomp, and all thy service. I believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost, and in one Baptism of repentance. Cyril expounds on each sentence to explain more about what each means and what it is they renounce and give up. Satan and his works – Renouncing and turning from evil and sin. All his pomp – From being involved in worldly affairs, such as “the madness of theatres, and horseraces, and hunting” and fro...