Merry Christmas from The Classical Thistle! We pray that you will enjoy this season with your family and friends and remember that God has become flesh and that our Savior will come again. I wanted to share with you a Christmas poem that I performed for our church’s Christmas Eve services. The goal of the poem is to put the Christmas story in a whole … Continue reading The Promised King Has Come
I have found that one of the most effective things I can do as a teacher is be transparent with my students. When I am willing to share with them areas of struggle in my own thinking, I think they gather encouragement that they are not alone in their confusion. I can sympathize with their intellectual weaknesses. But I think they also find encouragement in … Continue reading Teaching the Atonement, Part 2: Transparency
As we enter April and Good Friday and Easter are only a few away, it seems a good time to share some experiences from a recent unit I taught on the atonement. I hope this four-part series proves helpful for you in your teaching, but I also hope it serves as a way to prepare your heart for the remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice and the … Continue reading Teaching the Atonement, Part 1: Discovering Discord in My Students
I once had an encounter with a street evangelist who told me that the only true Bible was the King James Version. After thirty minutes, despite him admitting that the Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek, I had made no progress in convincing him of the reliability of other translations. As I walked away, however, he not only accused me of reading the wrong … Continue reading Can’t Beat the Real Thing: Rejecting Cheap Imitations of Christ in The Last Battle (Theology Through the Eyes of Fiction Series)
By Dan Snyder “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the … Continue reading The New Philistine; Objective Polemicist
Fracture. When has the word “fracture” been used in a way that we might call a “positive usage”? Indeed, it seems impossible to think of a circumstance in which we refer to something that has been “fractured” as a good thing. Even the word “shattered” can be conceived of in a positive context—as in a pot is shattered by the potter, so that it might … Continue reading FOR US AND FOR OUR SALVATION: INCARNATIONAL CONTEXTUALIZATION
How can we do justice to the Love of Christ? What words can describe the simplicity, the power, the magnanimity of the One True Love? Is His love of the mind only? Certainly not! Is his love thumatic alone? By no means! The Love of Christ subsumes the Mind and the Heart! But what of our appetite? Will our appetite for Christ endure forever or … Continue reading Oh to Christ, the Eternal Eros!
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