Wyatt Graham

Faith | Books | Culture

Why I Affirm Double Procession (the Spirit Proceeds from the Father and Son)

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For some time, the single procession of the Spirit made good sense to me. In the monarchy of God, the right order seems to be: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father is the sole principle who begets the Son and from whom the Spirit proceeds.

I found the phrase “the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son” helpful because it mediated the two positions (single and double procession). Like single procession, the Spirit comes from the Father. And like double procession, the Spirit comes from the Father by coming through the Son.

I was satisfied. Then I read Thomas Aquinas and Gilles Emery. They forced me to reconsider what the Bible said and to re-reflect on my theology.

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Review of Ways of Reading Scripture by Frances Young

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Biblical scholar and historian Frances Young has produced a volume of essays on the topic of Ways of Reading Scripture. Most of the twenty-five essays that are included have been published elsewhere. But Young wrote some new essays for this publication. That alone shows extra consideration since often these collected essays do not include much by way of new, scholarly contributions.

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Does My Gender Define Me?

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In the mid-nineteenth century, European legislators invented a taxonomy of gender to identify various sexual disorders (Blank 2012: 15–21). In this way, legal scholars created the idea of orientation, and new words like heterosexual and homosexual came into use.

As Michael Hannon explains, “Heterosexuals, like typewriters and urinals (also, obviously, for gentlemen), were an invention of the 1860s.” And according to Hanne Blank, “It has, in point of actual fact, only been possible to be a heterosexual since 1869” (2012: xiv). It would take about 60 years until these theories made their way into North America.

The straight truth is: heterosexuality is an invention of European legal philosophy. It is neither good nor bad for this reason. And yet we seriously need to question the validity of such gendered-identities. Especially now, since gendered categories have made their way into popular social paradigms.

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What Does James Say about Sin, Temptation, And Desire?

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Both Jesus and his brother James discuss how temptation turns into sin. For Jesus, hating or lusting mentally commits murder or adultery. James concurs with Jesus’ teaching and discusses how desire, temptation, and sin interrelate.

Since getting temptation, desire, and sin right matters so much for our personal growth, we need to get this right. And besides, current discussions on same-sex attraction revolve around these same subjects. So it is also a timely subject for discussion.

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Marriage and Family Existed before All Time

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Christians often maintain that marriage and family constitute foundations for society. From a biblical point of view, the argument goes like this. God created humanity. He instituted marriage through Adam and Eve. And through marriage, God founds the institution of the family that make up the backbone of society.

While true, this summary omits key realities that lie behind the two institutions. It tells us of the history of marriage and family but not the thing to which these institutions point nor their origin. Marriage and family are not originally human institutions. They belong to God by essence (family) and by promise (marriage) from before all time.

Families have their origin in the Father. Since he is Father, we have families (Eph 3:15). And the idea of marriage existed before the world’s founding because God promised to marry divinity to humanity in Christ and by the Spirit before the world’s foundation (Eph 5).

Here is what I mean.

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