Selected Reading, August 7, 2021

 

A few good reads for your weekend—or maybe your month.

Bible Study

What Does Hebrews 3:1-6 Mean?
I’m still slowing working through the book of Hebrews, so I enjoy seeing other people work through it, too. In this piece, Mike Leake explains Hebrews 3:1-6. (I posted two pieces on this passage a couple of years ago: Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant and Well Pleased, Beloved Son.)

History

A Woman for All Seasons
An essay on Sophie Scholl by Esther O’Reilly, who is always worth reading. 

Fiction

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
I stayed up late too many nights this week finishing up the classic novel Jane Eyre. The story was just as compelling this time as it was when I read it as a teen. But this time, I think, I noticed the humour more.

I enjoyed Jane Eyre much more than Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, which I reread last month. Let’s just say Wuthering Heights didn’t get any less weird with the passage of time.

The link above it to the Folio Society edition, which is the one I read. It’s expensive, but it looks and feels like a classic book should. 

Next on my reading list is The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. I’m making it a Bronte sisters summer.

Theological Term of the Week: Apollinarius

Apollinarius (or Apollinaris)
“[A]n Alexandrian thinker, a friend of Athanasius and a strong opponent of Arianism,” who “got in trouble for teaching quite openly that Christ did not have a human mind or spirit.”1 He lived from 300 until 390, and became bishop of Laodicea in 361.

• From 2000 Years of Christ’s Power by N. H. Needham, page 272: 

Apollinarius believed that the human mind was the source of all human weakness and sin. He therefore felt that Christ’s sinless perfection required Him not to have a human mind. The divine and infinite mind of the Son or Logos, Apollinarius taught, took the place of a human mind in Christ: He was a divine mind in a human body. This absence of a human mind preserved Christ from the possibility of sin. Apollinarius also thought that is Christ had a human as well as a divine mind, He would split apart into two separate persons, a human Son of Man and a Divine Son of God. So again, to avoid this disastrous conclusion, Apollinarius denied that Christ had a human mind. 

Learn more:

1. Philip Schaff: Apollinaris of Laodicea
2. 5 Minutes in Church History: An Eight-Syllable Heresy
3. Ligonier Ministries: The Apollinarian Heresy
4. Theology in the Middle: Apollinaris and Apollinarianism, Part 1 and Apollinaris and Apollinarianism, Part 2

Related terms:

• Ambrose of Milan
• Athanasius
• Augustine of Hippo
• Basil of Caesarea
• Cappadocian fathers
• Gregory of Nanzianzus
• Gregory of Nyssa
• Hilary of Poitiers
• Irenaeus of Lyons
• Jerome
• John Chrysostom
• Justin Martyr
• Monica
• Origen
• Pelagius
• Sabellius
• Tertullian

Filed under Christian History

1From 2000 Years of Christ’s Power by N. R. Needham.

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Sunday Hymn: Lo! He Comes, With Clouds Descending

Lo! he comes, with clouds descending,
Once for favored sinners slain;
Thousand thousand saints attending
Swell the triumph of his train:
Alleluia! Alleluia!
God appears on earth to reign.

Ev’ry eye shall now behold him,
Robed in dreadful majesty;
Those who set at naught and sold him,
Pierced, and nailed him to the tree,
Deeply wailing, deeply wailing,
Shall the true Messiah see.

Ev’ry island, sea, and mountain,
Heav’n and earth, shall flee away;
All who hate him must, confounded,
Hear the trump proclaim the day;
Come to judgment! Come to judgment!
Come to judgment, come away!

Now Redemption, long expected,
See in solemn pomp appear!
All his saints, by man rejected,
Now shall meet him in the air:
Alleluia! Alleluia!
See the day of God appear!

Yea, Amen! let all adore thee,
High on thine eternal throne;
Saviour, take the pow’r and glory,
Claim the kingdom for thine own:
O come quickly, O come quickly:
Alleluia! come, Lord, come.

—John Cen­nick

Other hymns of worship songs for this Sunday:

• The Old Rugged Cross at The Happy Wonderer