Home Blog Page 6

How the Trinity Explains Love, Life, the Universe, and Everything

By
ChadWGraham
-
1
The Trinity Explains Love, Life, the Universe, and Everything.

What do we mean when we call God a Trinity, and why does it matter? For the Christian tradition, the Trinity explains love, life, the universe, and pretty much everything. The word describes God, as a Tri-Unity, a Three and One. The Trinity focuses on the relationship of three divine Persons, in the one divine Being (Learn more: A Crash Course). It sounds pretty conceptual and impractical. However, in the Christian tradition the Trinity is the most practical and essential of Christian Doctrines.

The Trinity is the Framework of the most basic affirmation of faith, the Baptismal formula: “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty… and in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord [and] in the Holy Spirit” (The Apostles Creed). Without understanding the Trinity rightly, we will have a wrong understanding of our origins, of our destiny, and of our purpose. We would not understand love and life would be meaningless. This is very practical knowledge. But what is this belief? How can we understand the Trinity, and how can this be practical? We need the help of a genius! Fortunately, church history provides several geniuses who have explained the Trinity very clearly and practically.

Continue

What is Easter and Why Does it Matter?

By
ChadWGraham
-
0

The Message of Easter is about hope. It is good news. Easter is an undeniable, essential and critical message of the church. But what is this celebration all about? What does it mean?

A recent poll revealed a disturbingly high number of people that could not explain what Easter celebrates. I spoke about who and what Easter is about from Matthew 27:55-28:20. (Audio)

The Message of Easter

I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you … [W]hat I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas,[b]and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep … 10 this is what we preach, and this is what you believed (1 Corinthians 15:1-6, 10).

Read more about the resurrection here.

Good Friday: For Us and for Our Salvation

By
ChadWGraham
-
0
Worthy of the Gospel
Worthy of the Gospel

What is good Friday? Good Friday is the day the Church reflects on the death of the Son of God, who came for us and for our salvation. We do not call Good Friday “good” because it was a good and pleasant day. We call it good, because of what it accomplished. One ancient eye-witness recorded the facts of that day in Mathew 27:27-54. I explore the meaning of the facts below.

Continue

Cranmer: Scholar, Influencer, Martyr

By
ChadWGraham
-
5
Thomas Cranmer: Scholar, Culture Influencer, Martyr
Thomas Cranmer: Scholar, Culture Influencer, Martyr

He was a scholar and a cultural influencer. March 21st marks the anniversary of his Martyrdom. Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556) is one of the historical figure(s) I most want to meet.

He was burned alive for holding to the gospel by Queen “Bloody” Mary. She didn’t love him. But others did.

Continue

Knowing God at University, at the Alter and in Life

By
ChadWGraham
-
0
Knowing God at University, at the Alter, and in Life

J.I. Packer’s Knowing God (Amazon; .ca; .co.uk) taught me that theology “is the most practical project anyone can engage in” (p. 17). Even in conversing with this book, I was able to put this proposition to the test at three very critical times in my life; undergraduate studies, marriage, and career. In each case, Packer brought forward wisdom that shaped my studies, shaped my approach to marriage and shaped my career choices.

Knowing God: A Transforming Text

This post is part of a series of my reflections on transforming texts–the books that have changed my life the most. These books have become conversation parters with me.  I credit them with shaping my thinking, my desires, and my life. I think they will change your life too. When I think of the Bible as a transforming text, I adopt the language of Erasmus: “You must acquire the best knowledge first, and without delay; it is the height of madness to learn what you will later have to unlearn.” (Letter to Christian Northoff (1497), as translated in Collected Works of Erasmus (1974))

Continue

What Stephen Hawking Didn’t Know

By
ChadWGraham
-
0

The fear of death is something every human will experience. This fear might grip us, when we consider, or are confronted with death. This week, Stephen Hawking, the great theoretical Physicist passed away. From all accounts he did not profess to believe in God. He didn’t know what death would bring. This is a common human experience. Hamlet called death, the undiscovered country, convinced that a fear of what we do not know must make cowards of us all. Is this true?  Many leaders of the ancient Church (the church fathers) taught that sin is a reaction to the fear of death. Our culture certainly struggles with a fear of death. We try to deny it, mask it, or control it. But we very rarely face it.

Are you struggling with a particular sin? Or, are you afraid of the dangers of life? Do you find yourself anxious about aging, or death? God’s Word has a message of comfort for you. What Hamlet, and Hawking did not know, we know.

2 Corinthians 4:13-18

13 Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, 14 knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. 15 For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal (2 Corinthians 4:13-18 ESV).

What Hamlet Didn’t Know

 

Why Should You Read the Bible-The World’s Best Selling Book Ever?

By
ChadWGraham
-
1
Why Should You Read the World's Best Seller?
Why Should You Read The Bible?

No, It Doesn’t Go Without Saying. The Bible is the greatest book ever. it is the ultimate transforming text. Why should you read the Bible? You should read the Bible, because this book will challenge and educate and change you. It has shaped my mind, my heart, and my life like no other influence. Charles Dickens wrote his son Henry, “I most strongly and affectionately impress upon you the priceless value of the New Testament, and the study of that book as the one unfailing guide to life.” Selected Letters of Charles Dickens (Amazon; .ca; .co.uk,  p. 425)

The Bible: A Transforming Text

This post is part of a series of my reflections on transforming texts–the books that have changed my life the most. These books have become conversation parters with me.  I credit them with shaping my thinking, my desires, and my life. I think they will change your life too. When I think of the Bible as a transforming text, I adopt the language of Erasmus: “You must acquire the best knowledge first, and without delay; it is the height of madness to learn what you will later have to unlearn.” (Letter to Christian Northoff (1497), as translated in Collected Works of Erasmus (1974))

Continue

Transforming Texts That Shaped My Life and can Change Yours Too

By
ChadWGraham
-
3
Transforming Texts: Review of Craig Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition
Transforming Texts: Review of Craig Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition

There is nothing better than a good book and a good cup of java.  I am a bibliophile. Though, my wife might suggest I am a book hoarder. She’s wrong of course! The great early modern scholar Desiderius Erasmus had the right priorities in life. He is often quoted as saying, “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.” (Letter to Jacob Batt (12 April 1500); Collected Works of Erasmus Vol 1, (1974))

Why do I love books? I love books because I see them as life changing. Great books can be transforming texts. Transforming texts have changed my life. I have adopted the phrase “transforming texts,” from my favourite from one of my favourite writers, Anthony Thiselton.

Continue

Why the World Needs Wisdom, or How to Save the World

By
ChadWGraham
-
1
Why the World Needs Wisdom: or, how to save the world.
Why the World Needs Wisdom: or, how to save the world.

What the world needs now is  wisdom. The fate of the Western world hangs in the balance today.  It is in a serious, possibly terminal decline. Things are falling apart in education, politics, culture, and society. You and I need wisdom today. It is vital. It is the only think that can save the world. Wisdom, for Socrates, and Augustine, and today’s leading thinkers, is the only thing that will do. This is also the view of the wisest man who ever lived. He wrote:

“The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding.” (Proverbs 4:7).

Will Durant, in The Story of Philosophy: The lives and opinions of the world’s greatest philosophers from Plato to John Dewey (Amazon; .ca; .co.uk), describes the 5th century BC as an age of “destroyed faith” and “disintegrated individualism” (p. 7).

RC Sproul explains, in The Consequence of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts that Shaped Our World (Amazon; .ca; .co.uk), how this Greek culture ended up with “a crass politicization of education, economics, law, and public works led to a decline in both substantive thinking and civic virtue, both of which are enemies to any democratic enterprise that thrives on compromise and the relativization of ethics” (p. 27).

Do we not live in something of the same kind of world today? If you need a political illustration, simply compare the speech that got the United States’ first Republican President (Abraham Lincoln) elected (NPR), with the kind of speech that saw the most recent Republican (Donald Trump) installed in the White House.

Continue

Successful Parenting: Inspiring Minds to Shape Lives

By
ChadWGraham
-
1
Successful Parenting: Training up a Child
Successful Parenting: Training up a Child

The way we are trained to think and to behave as children has a lifelong impact on us. This impact is both a proverbial biblical truth, and a truth learned from experience. So, successful parents are focused on inspiring minds and shaping lives.  It is critical that parents inspire, reform, and train the minds and hearts of their children to prepare them for life. 

Continue
1...567Page 6 of 7

EDITOR PICKS

POPULAR POSTS

POPULAR CATEGORY

©