Category Archives: Love & Truth

Dr. Peter Williams of Tyndale House

This video is of Dr. Peter Williams of Tyndale House. He does a fantastic job in this 54 minute lecture, arguing for the historical reliability of the 4 canonical New Testament Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). He relies on old and more recent arguments (from scholars like Richard Bauckham and others). Williams is a cutting edge Protestant New Testament scholar who has done top notch scholarly work on the historical and linguistic background of the New Testament, and as well as work in Syriac (a dialect of Aramaic).

Thanks to Michael Bird for posting this on his blog.

I would recommend reading Richard Bauckham’s book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, on this topic.

Do not say

“I love her for her smile—her look—her way

Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought

That falls in well with mine, and certes brought

A sense of pleasant ease on such a day”—

For these things in themselves, Beloved, may

Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,

May be unwrought so.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was right: our hearts long for this kind of love—beyond looks, qualities, attributes, smiles, dimples, and pleasantries.  We long for a love that embraces our very existence: that no matter what happens I’m a necessary part of someone else’s world—a part that they can’t live without.  This is the love that gets Moses up “early in the morning” (Ex 34:4).  Indeed, it is the love that keeps us up late and gets us up early: “My soul has yearned for you in the night, and as morning breaks I watch for your coming” (Antiphon from Morning Prayer, Week 3).

Wonder and Awe

Confession is such an important Sacrament. We may associate the Sacrament of Confession especially with the season of Lent, or perhaps with Advent, but it is appropriate for Easter as well, since Easter celebrates the Lord’s resurrection, and many a soul are raised to new life through Confession. Moreover, Confession—which is sometimes called Reconciliation, or Penance—helps provide us with the grace and healing we need for the spiritual battles we engage in day in and day out. The battles I refer to are not the extraordinary ones we encounter in Hollywood films, so much as the daily battles we face to become more loving, to continually turn away from sin and turn toward God, continually to begin again and again—they are our daily battles to sow the seeds of the love and the peace of Christ in the world around us. In these daily battles, we get wounded, and Confession is the great Sacrament of healing that we need. St. Aphrahat was an eastern church father writing in the 300s A.D. Mike Aquilina includes a fantastic quotation from St. Aphrahat dealing with Confession/Penance, in a chapter devoted to the development of the Sacrament of Confession, in Aquilina’s wonderful book, Roots of the Faith. Here’s the quotation, taken from St. Aphrahat’s work, On Penitents: