To many of us "Spirit" is a colourless and vague word. The Holy Spirit is a faceless enigma beyond the grasp of our understanding. Yet, He - not "it" - is the One responsible for applying salvation to believers.
In the last two days I have heard of an engagement and an imminent adoption. It struck me as I have been studying for an exam on the Holy Spirit and salvation that in spite of the fact that often doctrine courses can leave students in the clouds (or on occassion, at sea), marriage and adoption are exquisite shadows of a reality that the Spirit actualises.
As evidenced by the fact that you are reading what I have written, I am part of the generation that blogs. Those who find themselves a part of this generation probably blog thanks to a slightly overinflated ego. One of the most common threads in these blogs is that of criticism because there's always someone who's doing or saying something stupid. They're all a bunch of hypocrites though...
For a few months I have been considering writing something brief on a remarkably popular line of reasoning that is often employed and yet, utterly fallacious. I began thinking about writing this after proofreading an essay for someone at college who made this mistake. I began actually typing stuff out after John MacArthur did it.
From lying in a game of Survivor in front of millions of viewers in order to win the million dollars, to a dummy pass in rugby for a clear run to the try line: a great deal of gameplay involves deceit to some degree. The question raised is, how much of this is innocent fun and how much is sinful?
Hebrew authors, it seems, have a propensity towards the prodigious use of direct speech but rarely reported speech and it seems clear that they were willing to summarise conversations into little speech bubble type reports which they recorded in direct speech.
I wanted to make the title, "God is History" but that doesn't work practically as well as "Theology is History". Of course, "Theology is History" doesn't have quite the same provocative effect. So instead, I went with something that actually describes the content of this post. I've been thinking recently about the relationship between history and theology. This, particularly with reference to Old Testament narrative; how we are to regard the literary nature of narrative arguing theology to actual history. I've come up with three points because Bible college has had an effect on the structure of my thinking. This is my thinking thus far:
When I am asked what field of theology I would like to study one of the first things that comes to mind is African Theology. If I say that though, I am often met with surprise or suppressed dismay (that I have become liberal): "Why should African Theology be any different from any other theology?" they wonder. Surely theology is not geographically constrained? Surely...
For college, we had to compare Postmillennialism and Premillennialism in a table or chart.
I saw coming towards us a Ghost who carried something on his shoulder. Like all the Ghosts, he was unsubstantial, but they differed from one another as smokes differ. Some had been whitish; this one was dark and oily. What sat on his shoulder was a little red lizard, and it was twitching its tail like a whip and whispering things in his ear. As we caught sight of him he turned his head to the reptile with a snarl of impatience. "Shut up, I tell you!" he said. It wagged its tail and continued to whisper to him. He ceased snarling, and presently began to smile. Then he turned and started to limp westward, away from the mountains.
