Welcome to my digest of Christian comment.
For Biblical commentary, use the Bible Commentary menu above, and for topical comments, use the categories list on the right.
Jonathan
1 Corinthians 3:15 – ‘Saved, but only as through fire’
1 Corinthians 3:15 – ‘If someone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss. He himself will be saved, but only as through fire.’
Does this verse support the doctrine of purgatory?
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
Purgatory, in other words, purifies those who, when they die, are neither good enough for heaven nor bad enough for hell.
The following bases for this doctrine are appealed to:
- 2 Maccabees 12:44f, where Judas Maccabeus makes provision for the atonement of the dead.
Romans 2:1 – ‘You are without excuse, whoever you are’
2:1 Therefore you are without excuse, whoever you are, when you judge someone else. For on whatever grounds you judge another, you condemn yourself, because you who judge practice the same things.
Who is this judgemental person?
Some think that Paul is directly addressing some in the Roman church:
But it is better to recognise that Paul’s literary technique at this point is that of a ‘diatribe’. He addresses an imaginary person (he is not necessarily thinking of any of the Roman Christians, for he has a high opinion of their spiritual status, Rom 1:8; 15:14
But is this imaginary person a Jew, or a Gentile?…
Christian Unity, Jn 17:20-23
17:20 “I am not praying only on their behalf, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their testimony, 17:21 that they will all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. I pray that they will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me. 17:22 The glory you gave to me I have given to them, that they may be one just as we are one—17:23 I in them and you in me—that they may be completely one, so that the world will know that you sent me, and you have loved them just as you have loved me.…
John 16:5 – “Not one of you is asking me, ‘Where are you going?'”
16:5 But now I am going to the one who sent me, and not one of you is asking me, ‘Where are you going?’
Some scholars think they have detected a contradiction between Jesus’ words recorded here and those recorded in Jn 13:36 and Jn 14:5.
Did the disciples ask Jesus where he was going, or did they not?
Ehrman (Jesus, Interrupted) writes:
Some, such as Bernard and Bultmann propose one or more major dislocations in the text.…
John 15:25 – ‘The Spirit…who goes out from the Father’
John 15:26 “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me.”
A long doctrinal debate about the ‘procession of the Holy Spirit’ has centred on this expression. The idea of the Holy .Spirit’s ‘procession’ from the Father was understood in ontological terms. To the basic formula the Western church added the ‘filioque’ (‘and the Son’) clause, and this was a point of division between the Eastern and Western branches of the church. …
Mary in Orthodox teaching and piety
While worship (latreia) belongs to God alone, Mary is reverenced and honoured as ‘the most exalted among God’s creatures’.
To give Mary her full title: ‘Our All-Holy, immaculate, most blessed and glorified Lady, Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary.’
Theotokos (‘Mother of God’, ‘God-bearer’) was assigned to Mary by the Council of Ephesus in 431. She is venerated because of her relation to Christ. It is precisely on account of the Son that we honour the Mother. …
The Eucharist in Orthodox teaching
The Orthodox doctrine of the Eucharist differs somewhat from the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Mass, and even more from the Protestant doctrine of the Lord’s Supper/Eucharist/Holy Communion.
The Orthodox Study Bible outlines three interpretations of Christ’s Eucharistic words as they have been understood by the church down the ages:
(a) ‘For the first thousand years of Christian history, when the Church was visibly one and undivided, the holy gifts of the Body and Blood of Christ were received as just that: His Body and Blood.…
Urban legends of the Old Testament
Urban Legends of the Old Testament: 40 Common Misconceptions. By David A Croteau and Gary E. Yates. Published by B&H Publishing Group (2019).
This book discussed 40 misinterpretations of Old Testament passages.
Here’s a list of contents. Items marked with a *star are included in my own set of ‘legends’.
*1. In the “Gap” between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, Satan Fell. This would require the reading, ‘And the earth became formless and empty’. What would then follow would be an account of re-creation. …
Luke 22:44 – ‘His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground’
Luke 22:44 And in his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.
Some old writers, and some modern apologists, eager to squeeze the last drop(!) out of this passage, take it to mean that Jesus actually sweated drops of blood.
Accord to Raymond Brown, Irenaeus understood it to mean that Jesus ‘sweat drops of blood’.
The esteemed Puritan John Flavel:
Other Puritan writers, including Sibbes and Brooks, seem to asusme, without question, that our Lord sweated blood, or ‘water and blood’ (Sibbes) in the garden.…
Chrismation
In the Eastern churches the sacrament of chrismation (Gr. chrismatis, ‘anointing’) is associated with that of baptism. It involves anointing with oil by the bishop or priest.
Timothy Ware (The Orthodox Church) says that chrismation is equivalent to Confirmation in the Western churches. Unlike Confirmation, however, it usually takes place immediately after Baptism:
A child is brought to Communion as soon as possible after Christmation.
Chrismation is also used in the reconciliation of former apostates to the Church, and, sometimes, in the reception into Orthodoxy, of Christians from the Western churches.…
Matthew 2:11 – ‘Gold, frankincense, and myrrh’
2:11 As [the magi] came into the house and saw the child with Mary his mother, they bowed down and worshiped him. They opened their treasure boxes and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Do the gifts have symbolic meaning?
Some of seen a symbolic significance in the individual gifts offered. An anonymous writer from the Patristic period was one of the first to attach symbolic meaning to the gifts:
According to the Orthodox Study Bible:
Green remarks that gold is especially associated with royalty; incense with priestly worship, and myrrh with burial.…
The struggle for free speech in our universities
This draws on an article with the above title from The Bulletin, produced by Affinity’s Social Issues Team.
In February 2021, the Dean of Students at Chicago University wrote to new students. The letter included the following:
Clearly, this was written against a background of, and concern about, the stifling of free speech and debate. It offers a very refreshing antidote to much of what is going in in universities in many parts of the Westerern world, including here in the UK.…
Was Jesus destitute?
It is often thought (especially around Christmas-time – cue smelly stable) that Jesus was born and raised in poverty, and that his ministry focussed very much on the economically disadvantaged.
A survey of the available evidence shows that the reality is considerably more nuanced than this.
I was pointed by this article from Ian Paul to a chapter by Roland Deines in the German volume Anthropologie und Ethik im Frühjudentum und im Neuen Testament (Anthropology and Ethics in Early Judaism and the New Testament).…
Hebrews 13:10 – ‘We have an altar’
Heb 13:10-11 We have an altar that those who serve in the tabernacle have no right to eat from. For the bodies of those animals whose blood the high priest brings into the sanctuary as an offering for sin are burned outside the camp.
The main contours of the author’s argument are clear enough: the readers are not to get ‘carried away’ by ‘strange teachings’, such as those involving ritual meals. We are nourished spiritually by God’s grace, not by the foods we eat or abstain from. …
Liturgical worship in Eastern Orthodoxy
Everyone agrees that the worship of God’s people in Old Testament times was liturgical in nature.
As the Orthodox Study Bible indicates:
Since Moses was commanded to make earthly worship ‘a copy and shadow of the heavenly things’, it is argued that liturgical worship takes place in heaven, too (Heb 8:5; cf. Ex 25:40). Indications of such heavenly worship are found in isa 6:1-8 and Rev 4.
Since the Lord Jesus Christ is ‘a priest forever’ (Heb 7:17,21), it is ‘unthinkable’ that he would not serve liturgically. …