The Ministry of Reconciliation
by James Duguid | January 2, 2025
This week, I am preaching on Paul's description of his own ministry as a ministry of reconciliation. Preaching this passage raises a question of application: how widely can we apply this language of the ministry of reconciliation? Is it just a description of Paul's own ministry, or possibly also of other leaders in the church? Or is there a sense in which every Christian should think of themselves as involved in the ministry of reconciliation? I will argue that there is. But first, a look at the passage in question:
Back in Action
by James Duguid | December 31, 2024
I created this site back in 2018, but I haven't added a post since May of that year. The site stopped working in December of 2021. I was pretty busy with my dissertation for this period. But I have now fixed the backend issues and given the site a new look.
Got Those Bidirectional Blues
by James Duguid | May 27, 2018
Anyone who has tried to work with mixed Hebrew and English text has probably had some difficulties, especially with punctuation (e.g., parentheses get flipped around, and show up in the wrong places). While Unicode bidirectional formatting is a wonderful thing, it has some trouble with characters which could be interpreted as requiring either right-to-left or left-to-right formatting. This post details a simple Unicode fix that should solve some of your problems.
A Dogmatic Devotion from John Brown of Haddington
by James Duguid | January 23, 2018
Someone recently recommended to me the work of 18th-century Scottish theologian John Brown of Haddington. I spent some time this evening paging through his A Compendious View of Natural and Revealed Religion in Seven Books (free digitally here, hard copy for sale here). It is pretty great. One of the unique features is that Brown includes doxological and applicational digressions at the end of sections, so you don't just learn doctrine, you also find yourself pointed to respond in worship to God. What follows is a selection from the section Of the Nature and Perfections of God:
Thus Spake Elsa
by James Duguid | January 8, 2018
Friends of mine may be aware of my enthusiasm for searching the hidden, philosophical depths of the movie Frozen. Some of them have even expressed skepticism, dear reader, that such profundity truly lies beneath the ice of a Disney film, a film which features a singing snowman, no less. Ah, but you and I know, don't we, that there is more here than meets the eye, even with that snowman? But Olaf shall have to wait for another time. I want to begin the first of no doubt several investigations into the philosophy of Frozen with the quite obvious fact that it draws inspiration from none other than Nietzsche.