Covenant Essays: Three

The essays within these covers inform and challenge. T. Hoogsteen recognized that even with the world-changing alterations caused by migrations, disasters, and wars profoundly reshaping the face of the earth and its human community, the Lord Jesus Christ creates history. Nothing on earth or in the universe happens from fatalistic forces. In the Bible, imagebearing and officebearing come through with imposing insistence; we cannot assume that we can be who we want to be, independent individuals or communist societies. The Lord gives each person a place and a task for our lives. Self-examination, a forgotten responsibility, comes to the fore with compelling insight. Who are you in the presence of the Christ? An ignored exercise of prolegomena--the explanatory word before starting theological work--is recognized as significant for this introductory effort. The author discovered ancient Greek mythology holding up the formidable Nicene Creed, Homoean Christology, and the Athanasian, matters that need deletion and reformation. The ideal of the freedom of the will has long, at least since the third century AD, intrigued the church and the world outside. Freedom of the will is a pagan invention. Christ Jesus in the name of the Father and through the Spirit gives perspective even in darkest times.