God, in Christ, has Earned it For Us by Halden Doerge (1/8/2010)...s seemed like something of an oddity. And if it mysterious to us why Jesus underwent baptism at the beginning of his ministry, we should remember that it was no less mysterious to John the Baptizer. What we do know about the Lord’s baptism, though, is that it occasions an extremely radical divine event: the Father himself speaks and the Holy Spirit is seen in physical form. This is nothing to be t...
Setting Nature on Fire by Halden Doerge (9/10/2009)...James to be my favorite book of the Bible. In reflecting back on why I found it so important at the time I think what drew me to James was the sort of clarity I seemed to find there. It is certainly no accident that this passage is paired in the lectionary readings with the Proverbs. Among all the books of the New Testament there is a sort of practicality to James—strong vestiges of the Hebrew Wis...
On Receiving Gifts by Halden Doerge (7/31/2009)...9218">Ps 51:1-12</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=116059245">Eph 4:1-16</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=116059273">John 6:24-35</a>)
The readings for this week offer an odd combination of themes. Both the Old Testament and Psalm readings are quite clearly concerned with the fallout of the <a href="http://ekklesiaproject.blogspot.com/2009/07/sex-in-public.html">affair between ...
The Metaphysics of Discipleship by Halden Doerge (8/1/2008)...ed church's history the notion became prominent that the ethics of Jesus, particularly as recorded in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) and other prominent texts in the gospels (cf. Luke 6:17-46; 14:15-34), simply cannot be done by people who live in the real world. They are rather "counsels of perfection" which are either only for a specific clerical or monastic caste (as in Medieval Catholici...