isms and schisms
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36. Incarnation (Christmas Special)
The word ‘Incarnation’ comes from the Latin incarno, meaning “in flesh”, which is generally drawn from John 1.14 – “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” In simple terms, it’s God becoming human. The creator getting amongst the creation. We have discussed this somewhat in other episodes, so you might like to listen…
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35. December 25th (Christmas Special)
Figuring out why Christmas is celebrated on the 25th of December is actually quite difficult. It’s a real tangle of traditions and sources and ideas. But first, I want to clarify that Christmas is not just one day. The 25th of December is just the first day of Christmas. Christmas is technically celebrated for 12…
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34. Magi (Christmas Special)
The story of the magi, the wise men from the east who followed the star to Bethlehem to kneel before Jesus and present him with valuable gifts that predicted Jesus’ ministry, is such an iconic piece of the Christmas story. All those nativity scenes at churches, shopping centres, and in people’s homes would look very…
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33. Advent (Christmas Special)
The word advent comes from the Latin word adventus which means “coming” or “arrival” and was generally used to refer to the arrival of an important person. So within Christian tradition, it refers to the period of reflection in the lead up to the celebration of the arrival of Jesus. It also doubles as anticipation…
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32. Infallibilism
This week’s topic is on biblical infallibilism, which is closely relate to the idea of inerrancy. They are virtually synonymous, but have slightly different meanings. Infallibilism means that the Bible cannot contain errors, whereas inerrancy does not contain errors. Inerrancy claims that every little detail in the Bible is exactly correct, on all matters and…
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31. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Born in 1906 in Breslau, which is now part of Poland, Bonhoeffer was a twin and born into a large family of 8 children. They were a religious family but didn’t think church attendance was especially important, they weren’t big church goers – which is ironic because Bonhoeffer’s later dissertation was all about the church.…
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30. The Crusades: Over the Hills and Far Away
Where that initial ragged army and their disastrous attempt to get to Jerusalem – to barely get beyond Christian lands – was known as the People’s Crusade, or the Peasant’s Crusade, the real First Crusade (though they didn’t know that it would be the first crusade at that point) is known as the Prince’s Crusade,…
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29. The Crusades: God Wills It!
The reality of the crusades is that they were actually pretty giant failures. Aside from being moral failures, the crusades were a bumbling mess that ended up with so many going bankrupt, some returning as conquering heroes to find their estates had been sold off and their wives married to someone else, they took all…
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28. Feminism
Feminism, in general, is the pursuit of equality between the genders. This includes the assumption that women have generally been suppressed for the majority of human history, that there has generally been a bias toward men, and that political and economic structures privilege and favour men. So feminism is about challenging this, disrupting the assumptions…
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27. Egalitarianism
The basic gist of egalitarianism is that there are no gender specific roles. Neither women nor men are restricted in terms of the roles they can or are expected to perform within the church or within a marriage. This is not a denial of any difference between the biological sexes, but rather the insistence that…
A. K. Chidgzey 