Study

The letter the five points were mined from, read whole — sixteen chapters, each with its key verse, Karl Barth at the desk, discussion questions, and a cloud of witnesses; printable one chapter to a page. A companion within the TULIP study.

A chapter-by-chapter study of Nehemiah — each chapter a printable three-page worksheet with a Hebrew word study, scriptural cross-references, voices from six Christian traditions, discussion questions, and passages from Magnifica Humanitas. Prepared for the Irvine chapter of the Google Christian Fellowship.

The believers Scripture places inside powers they had no hand in choosing — Joseph and the midwives, Obadiah in Ahab’s household, Naaman in the house of Rimmon, Daniel, Esther, Nehemiah, the dissenters on the council, Caesar’s household — gathered against the counterweight of “come out of her, my people.” No verdict.

A chronology of the Christian church — the councils and the deserts, the missionaries east before west, the great tearings and the great awakenings — from the Mount of Olives to the global church of today.

An analysis of the traditional Calvinist doctrine of TULIP, petal by petal — each of the five points stated fairly in its strongest form, its proof-texts gathered, and the passages that strain against it heard with equal care.

A distillation and indexing of everything Jesus himself said — the kingdom announced, the commands, parables, warnings & promises — heard on their own terms, without bringing in Pauline interpretations.

A study of the coming Kingdom of God and what the Bible wants us to know — the prophets’ hope, the already & not-yet, the resurrection of the body, and the renewal of all things.

A study of intercession in Scripture — Christ the one intercessor, the prayers of the righteous, the incense of the saints — and the contested question of whether the saints in heaven pray for the church on earth, and may be asked to.

The contemplative tradition read first-hand rather than through its modern interpreters — whole texts, set to be actually read. On the shelf: Dionysius’s Mystical Theology and Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on Ecclesiastes, complete, a chapter to a page.

The month-long retreat a wounded Basque soldier wrote at Manresa and spent twenty-five years revising — complete in Elder Mullan’s 1914 English from the Spanish autograph. All four Weeks, the Annotations, the fifty-one Mysteries, and every set of Rules, unabridged. No commentary, no verdict: the text, whole.

Eight centuries of reported stigmata indexed — the canonized, the medically examined, and the frauds the Inquisition caught — with what each investigation actually found, and the fact that the Church has never once declared any of it supernatural. Including the question of palms or wrists, where the wounds turn out to move whenever the pictures do.

Twelve forks in the church’s long road — authority, grace, the table, the water, the saints — each side stated at its strongest. Answer all twelve and be named a tradition, from Rome and the East to Wittenberg, Geneva, and Azusa Street. No verdicts; your answers stay in your browser.

A brief reference: the key differences between Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Protestant theology — authority, canon, salvation, the Eucharist, the saints — set side by side in one table.