Dr Paul Allen

Icon depicting the First Council of Nicaea. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) William Wordsworth sounds the warning: Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Misshapes the beauteous forms of things: We murder to dissect . Dissecting Christmas carols can be musical murder. Unless the disassembly fits together again more beautifully and more fully felt. That’s my goal. “O Come All Ye Faithful” is near the top of my favorites. As I ponder why, I see it’s because of three marriages in this carol. Heaven and Earth First is the marriage of heaven and earth. Of course, that is what Christmas is: “Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing.” But this glorious fact is not what I have in mind. What captures my attention here is that, as we sing, we summon all the faithful on earth to come, and we summon choirs of angels to come — both to see and adore Christ . Verse 1: “O come, all ye faithful. . .” Verse 3: “Sing, choirs of angels . . .” And so the “us”...

Richard I the Lionheart, King of England (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) God said to David's Lord, "Sit at My right hand till I make Your enemies Your footstool" (Mark 12:36). When we study the biblical narratives of the life and work of Jesus, as well as the apostolic commentaries on those narratives, we discover moments of supreme importance in terms of redemptive history. These include His birth, His death on the cross, His resurrection, the  Day of Pentecost , and His return. However, there is an element in the work of Christ that we almost completely overlook. It is the session of Jesus. The word session is appropriate to describe these situations because it is derived from the Latin sessio, which simply means "the act of sitting." The most important session of all is the session of  Jesus Christ  in heaven. When Yahweh said to David's Lord, "Sit at My right hand," He was saying, "Be seated in the highest place of authority in the univers...

English: Icon from Mount Athos depicting the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) This question prompted the First Council of Nicaea started in 325 and concluded with the Second Council of Nicaea in 787.  Setting   &  Purpose The First Council of Nicaea was convened in 325 by the Roman Emperor Constantine . Constantine had hoped to unite his empire under the banner of Christianity, but now saw such unity threatened by a grave theological dispute. Hosius of Cordoba recommended a council as the means to address the brewing controversy and Constantine responded by calling church leaders to Nicaea in Bithynia (modern-day Iznik, Turkey). Somewhere between 250 and 318 bishops from across the Roman empire attended, and the council began its formal deliberations on  May 20 . The major issue the council was charged with addressing was the nature of Christ‘s divinity, and in particular, the relationship between the Father and the...

From a painting of Immanuel Kant (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) 1 Chronicles 29:11 “Yours, O Lord , is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty…. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all” (v. 11). Theological controversy did not end at the Council of Nicea , and in the following centuries the church had to deal with errors regarding the humanity of Christ , the authority of Scripture, justification, and others. Despite the various positions taken on these issues, however, most theologians still insisted on the transcendence of God . That all changed in the nineteenth century. Our Creator ’s transcendence is affirmed throughout Scripture and is reflected in the passage of 1 Chronicles 29:11. When we say God is transcendent, we mean that He is separate from His creation and not dependent on the created order in any way.  The Almighty made the universe and He is therefore its sovereign ruler (Gen...

Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglican Church http://www.stjohnsashfield.org.au, Ashfield, New South Wales. Illustrates Jesus' description of himself "I am the Good Shepherd" (from the Gospel of John, chapter 10, verse 11). This version of the image shows the detail of his face. The memorial window is also captioned: "To the Glory of God and in Loving Memory of William Wright. Died 6th November, 1932. Aged 70 Yrs." (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) John 1:1–18 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God , and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God” (vv. 1–2). In the history of Christian doctrine, the cities of Antioch and Alexandria stand out as centers of theological development in the early church. Many of the major promoters of heresy hailed from these cities, but defenders of orthodoxy came from both cities as well. When it came to the debates over the  deity of Christ , Antioch, which is located in modern Turkey, was a c...

English: Icon of Jesus Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Ask your average Muslim, Unitarian, Jehovah’s Witness, or just about any non-Christian skeptic who has read (or watched)   The Da Vinci Code ,  and they’ll try to convince you the answer is  no .  From such sources we are told that the deity of Christ was a doctrine invented centuries after Jesus’ death – a result of pagan influences on the church in the fourth century when the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its official religion. Emperor Constantine , in particular, is blamed for being the guy who promoted Jesus to the level of deity, a feat of cosmic proportions that he managed to pull off at the Council of Nicaea in 325. As Dan Brown put it (through the lips of one of his literary characters): “Jesus’ establishment as ‘the Son of God ’ was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea. . . . By officially endorsing J...

The Vatican Museum houses a vast collection of ancient objects related to the early history of the Christian church. Within that collection, on public display and remarkably intact despite its age, is an intricately carved sarcophagus--a box designed to hold human remains--that was discovered in Rome’s basilica di San Paolo fuori le Mura during its restoration in the 1800’s. Historians date it between 330 and 350 AD.. The outside of this sarcophagus is divided into an upper and lower tier and each is carved all around with biblical imagery drawn from both the Old and New Testaments. Among the scenes along the upper tier are God giving his Creation Mandate to Adam, the wedding at Cana, and the miracle of the loaves and the fish. Along the lower tier is the arrival of the Magi to worship the baby Jesus, the healing of the blind man, Jesus foretelling Peter’s denial, and Peter baptizing his jailers. In the middle of it all is an image of the Christian couple who commissioned t...