Rebecca Stark is the author of The Good Portion: God, the second title in The Good Portion series.
The Good Portion: God explores what Scripture teaches about God in hopes that readers will see his perfection, worth, magnificence, and beauty as they study his triune nature, infinite attributes, and wondrous works.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 6:44PM 
Baptism is not to be administered to any that are out of the visible church, and so strangers from the covenant of promise, till they profess their faith in Christ, and obedience to him,[1] but infants descending from parents, either both, or but one of them, professing faith in Christ, and obedience to him, are in that respect within the covenant, and to be baptized.[2]
Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 3:17PM One
A couple of weeks ago, youngest son adopted a puppy from the animal shelter, and since youngest son lives here with me, so does his pup. Since he’s all black, he’s not all that easy to photograph, but here he is having some fun in the back yard on his first day at our home.
The little dog’s name is David, which is the name they gave him in the shelter. Son thought of changing it, but he’d known him as David for a week by the time the adoption was completed, so he decided to keep his original shelter name. My apologies to you if your name is David or you’ve given one of your sons that name. Keep in mind that he’s a very gentle and polite young dog and maybe that’ll help you feel less insulted.
He’s seven months old, and before he came here, he’d spent his whole life at the shelter. Everything is new to him, but he’s adjusting very well and learning to do his business outdoors, walk on a leash, and leave the cats alone. That last lesson is the most difficult for him.
He and Taffy have become great friends. Taffy didn’t care for him much at first, but he copies everything she does and she knows that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so she’s decided he’s alright in her book. Taffy is eight years old, but she’s never outgrown her love of rough and tumble play, and she’s happy to have a companion who will wrestle and play fight with her in the back yard.
The papers we got from the shelter say David is Husky X, but his big ears and quick intelligence make me suspect he’s more German Shepherd.
Would you say he’s become comfortable in his new home?
Two
Oldest son has started his own business which he’s running out of my home, mostly out of my garage. His company is called Stark Window Solutions, and he’s installing windows, focusing especially on doing the indoor trim.
He makes his own trim using a fancy-dancy machine he had shipped from Nova Scotia. Fortunately for him, his dad left a garage/shop filled with good woodworking machines and tools, so he’s only needed to spring for that one machine and the electrical work needed to run it—work which is being done as I write—making his start up costs much less than they would have been otherwise.
Three
Youngest daughter is moving back home on the first of July. Since she moved out I’ve made her old bedroom into my sewing room and I didn’t want to give that up, so she’ll be taking over what used to be oldest son’s bedroom in the basement. Since he moved out, I’ve been using it as a general storage room, which means I must get down there soon and sort through all that stuff and decide what to keep, what to throw out, and what to give away.
It promises to be a big job—a job made even bigger when I let oldest son take a set of work cupboards from the basement to mount in his garage/shop and told him to just put everything in the cupboards in his old bedroom/storage room.
It’s a rainy day today and the internet connection is dreadful, so I think I’ll head down there to get started sorting as soon as I post this.
Monday, June 15, 2009 at 6:11PM 
Apollinarianism
A Christological heresy taught in the fourth century by Apollinaris of Laodicea, who maintained that Christ had a human body and a human soul, but not human mind. Rather, Christ’s mind came from the divine nature of the Son of God; in place of the human mind was the divine Logos. This teaching declared to be heretical by the First Council of Constantinople in 381.
Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. (Hebrews 2:17 ESV)
Question 16. Why must [the mediator and deliverer] be very man…?
Answer: Because the justice of God requires that the same human nature which has sinned, should likewise make satisfaction for sin….
The central deviation of Apollinarianism from the later Chalcedonian orthodoxy began in a Platonic trichtomy. Man was seen to be body, sensitive soul, and rational soul. Apollinaris felt that if one failed to diminish the human nature of Jesus in some way, a dualism had to result. Furthermore, if one taught that Christ was a complete man, then Jesus had a human rational soul in which free will resided; and wherever there was free will, there was sin. Therefore it followed that the Logos assumed only a body and its closely connected sensitive soul. The Logos or Word himself took the place of the rational soul (or spirit or nous) in the manhood of Jesus.
…The general principle on which Apollinarianism was condemned was the Eastern perception that “that which is not assumed is not healed.” If the Logos did not assume the rational soul of the man Jesus, then the death of Christ could not heal or redeem the rational souls of men. And as the church wrestled with this perception it rejected Apollinarianism and moved toward the Chalcedonian Definition, which rebuked and corrected both Antioch and Alexandria in their extremes: “This selfsame one is perfect both in deity and also in humanness; this selfsame one is also actually God and actually man, with a rational soul and a body.”
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