Looking at Christ

What makes swearing / profanity - whatever you want to call it - wrong? This is something I was too slow to work through as a new Christian and it is something that I've had to think through more recently in response to what seems like an ever more ubiquitous use of crude language. Why should those following Christ avoid using certain words? Is it just prudish? Is it just middle class? Is it just legalism based on a few proof texts? Here's a first-draft sketch of a theology of profanity... The image of God Duncan Forbes and others have highlighted voice as a key element of the image of God. As God speaks creation into being and evaluates and names and blesses, so he gives humanity voice through which to rule and relate.  In the frame of that big picture, what is the problem with swearing? It's a wrong use of the voice. Instead of using my voice to build others up and benefit them, I am using my voice to cut them down and curse them. Instead of using my voice to praise and t...

The idea here is that there are layers to Christ's fullness and when the biblical authors present Christ to us they might only explicitly refer to one layer but as they do that the underlying layers are also implied. Or to put it another way, the glory of the underlying layers shines through the layer that is presented to us. That might sound strange, abstract and not particularly helpful but let me try to explain.  The incarnation implies the pre-existent Word When John identifies "Jesus Christ has come in the flesh" as the key test of orthodoxy, Augustine asks (Homily 6 on 1 John) how can this be when so many heretics happily affirm the humanity of Jesus but deny his deity? Augustine then asks us to dig a bit deeper and consider: From whence did he come? "Was he not God?" Simon Gathercole demonstrated (in his 2006 book, The Pre-existent Son ) that Jesus' phrase in the synoptic gospels, "I have come", implies divine pre-existence.  So whenever we ...