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“Receive the Holy Spirit”

On the evening after his resurrection, Jesus “breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.'” (Jn 20:22). How, then, is it possible to become “filled with the Holy Spirit” seven weeks later on Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4) if the disciples had already received the Holy Spirit?Continue Reading

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Climate Reparation Fallout

Small, second-world nations will band together in coalition(s?) for climate-change reparations and will exert tremendous demand-side economic pain until they get it. As wealth flows downward, first- and upper second-world nations will coalesce to sanction the former for their actions and cut them off from specific products. the former will then attack the later.

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In Jesus’s Name (Part 1)

Perhaps because Scripture says that “in my name” they will perform signs and miracles (Mk 16:17-18), Christians of all flavors, and almost without exception, conclude prayers for miraculous interventions with “In Jesus’s name…”. Pentecostals are quick to invoke “in Jesus’s name” to command matters to transpire. The thing is, that’s not what “name” meant in the Jewish cultural context of Jesus’s day. As Timothy Keller frequently explains, “name” connoted “personhood,” like when a son handles his father’s business affairs while the father is away, or when an ambassador exercises abroad the authority of her nation, or when mayors express the sentiments of their cities, they act in a name.Continue Reading

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Second Amendment Restrictions

Americans might be more willing to accept goon/anno restrictions if it were applied equally to the militarization-thirsty (and qualifiedly-immune) police. The second amendment is substantively a repudiation and protection from the one law for me, another law for thee conduct of state actors. Let them lead by example by demilitarizing themselves before they ask citizens to demilitarize. Then there would truly be no need for such gear.

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Judas and Caiaphas

Speaking to Pilate, Jesus said in John 19:11, “he who delivered me over to you the greater sin.” Most readers assume that Jesus implicated Judas, but it is more probable that Jesus had Caiaphas in mind for “it was Caiaphas who had advised the Jews that it would be expedient that one man should die for the people” (John 18:14). “They therefore led Jesus from Caiaphas to the Prætorium” (John 18:28) complaining to Pilate that “it is not lawful for us to put anyone to death” (John 18:31). Therefore, it would appear that Jesus indicated that it was Caiaphas who “had the greater sin” for delivering Jesus to Pilate for the purpose of dying. For his part, it appears that Judas had no foreknowledge of Caiaphas’s intentions because when Judas “saw that Jesus was condemned, he felt remorse […] saying, ‘I have sinned in that I betrayed innocent blood'” (Matthew 27:3-4).