In a Bleak Midsummer
As you, God born of God long ago, Son of the true Father, eternally existed without beginning in the glory of heaven, so your own creation cries with confidence to you now for their needs, that you send that bright sun to us, and come yourself to lighten those who long have lived surrounded by shadows and darkness, here in everlasting night, who, shrouded by sins, have had to endure death’s dark shadow. (“O Oriens” [“O Dayspring”], Anglo-Saxon Advent Antiphon, translated by Eleanor Parker) In the Christmas traditions of Northern Europe, Christ comes in the dead of winter when all the world is dead and frozen under a pall of…
God in the Flesh: Incarnation Reflections
Last week, I had the great privilege of participating with Mark Thompson and Charles Cleworth in EV Church’s third theology seminar on the Incarnation. We had a good discussion and the staff and visitors asked us excellent questions. I will provide a link to media from the even as it becomes available. But in the meantime, I thought it might be helpful to draw together some of the theological ideas that I tried to stress, both in my paper, and which seemed significant in conversations before and after. There is a little bit of theological terminology here. But if it seems too academic, you can just cut straight to the…
The Storied World: Impassibility, Incarnation & Virtual Reality
In recent months, I have been thinking and writing about the significance of stories, divine impassibility and the incarnation. Here is a post to draw some of those threads together in the light of our Christmas hope. Some of this is an adaptation of a paper I gave up at EV church earlier this month. Here’s an odd truth to consider. The world we live in is virtual. I don’t mean that it is a mere illusion or a light-show, or that there is another physical reality behind it. I mean that it doesn’t have self-existence. The world is not a series of objects existing alongside God. Rather, God is…
