Faith | Books | Culture
Derek Rishmawy recently tweet-blogged about the Trinity and how evangelicals engage with Trinitarian theology. For example:
2) Evangelicals at the pop level simply don’t take the Trinity that seriously. They believe it mostly, but often not “deeply”.
— Derek Rishmawy (@DZRishmawy) December 2, 2016
The psalms contain the emotions of the soul and portray the experiences of life, but they also direct us god-ward. If we only read the psalms in a personal or internal way, we miss something important.
And yet reading the Psalms in a god-ward way does not make our reading impersonal. John Calvin begins his Institutes by asking the question: Do we start with God or with man? It is nearly impossible to answer that, since one always leads to the other. When we start with ourselves and our weaknesses, we turn to God who is our strength. When we start with God, we come to know ourselves truly. For Calvin, “it is evident that man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he [has] previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself” (Bk 1., Ch 1., §2).
The Psalms uniquely contemplate the face of God. They record divine conversations of the Trinity, of the Father to the Son and of the Son to the Father. We may wonder how the Father and Son talk to each other since they are both God. To some degree, the Psalms satisfy our wonder, as they pull back the veil, as it were, and let us listen to the Trinity speak.
[Read more…] about Hearing the Trinity’s Voice in the Psalms
The Psalms also teach us to talk to God, to pray. They teach us how to complain to God and to praise God. How to accuse God, how to honour God. How to lament to him, how to thank him.
Many of us probably feel comfortable praising and honouring God, but it feels intuitively wrong to complain, accuse, or lament to him, and yet the Psalms often teach us to do just that.
We need to be very careful here, because simply telling God how you feel in all its ugliness can be a recipe for darkness, despair and God’s displeasure. The Psalms avoid these dark paths, and they instead lead us down a road of sorrow, reconciliation, and praise. They supply divine words to our distasteful experience. By speaking the words of the Psalms to God, we are really using words supplied by the Holy Spirit to work through our relationship with our Father. [Read more…] about How to Complain Christianly
One thing I have asked of Yahweh, and I will seek after it. It’s that I might sit in Yahweh’s house every day of my life to gaze at the beauty of Yahweh and learn in his temple.
– David in Psalm 27:4
The Psalms constantly command readers to praise God, yet doesn’t this make God out to be a unsatisfied narcissist? The Psalms also seem to make praise something of a transaction: do this and I will praise you, yet doesn’t this make God like the pagan gods of old? Such questions, however, betray a misguided perspective of the idea of praise. [Read more…] about The Problem of Praise
Have you ever wondered if there is a Christian way to feel? All of us experience deep seated anger, depths of depression, and delights of joy. Sometimes we let emotions overwhelm us without giving it a second thought. Yet there is a distinctively Christian way that we should experience these emotions. It is the Psalms that teach us how to handle times of joy and sorrow.
The early Christians understood this. Consider the words of Saint Athanasius in his Letter to Marcellinus on the Psalms: “These words become like a mirror to the person singing them, so that he might perceive himself and the emotions of his soul” (§12). When he reads the Psalms he sees himself as if looking into mirror, reflecting back to him the emotions of his soul. When the Psalmist cries, Athanasius sees his tears; when the Psalmist shouts with joy, Athanasius sees himself smile. [Read more…] about How to Feel Emotions Christianly
Tom Wright and Tom Schreiner recently participated on a Christian radio called Unbelievable? They discuss Wright’s new book The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’ Crucifixion, and they disagree somewhat sharply on how to emphasis the wrath of God and the idea of penal substitution in the Bible. To listen to the this fascinating discussion, click here.
