Wade Johnston, Life Under the Cross: A Biography of the Reformer Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis: MO, 2025.
This ancient “tale of two mothers” concerns far more than theological semantics—it is the difference between a God who sends and a God who comes.
This story points us from our unlikely heroes to the even more unlikely, and joyous, good news that Jesus’ birth for us was just as unlikely and unexpected.

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There is no true “self” apart from God. Anything so surmised is caught up in the meaninglessness that is death.
Good, we tend to think, is the absence of evil. But this reversal of the formula can only have disastrous consequences.
Walking in the light doesn't entail a spotless moral record but rather an honest appraisal of who we are.
Cranach became the evangelical interpreter for the masses
God is consistently rooting us in reality—both what is seen and unseen—because that is where he is.
Take heart: God is near and he is here for you.
There is power in the name of Jesus, and we love to manipulate power for our own ends.
Faith is like a horse with blinders because it only beholds God’s promise. It is obsessed with what God has already said.
Gregory is a bridge between the patristic age and the medieval.
Cyril’s fervor for pure explication of the gospel was present throughout his career.
We cannot overstate that no person outside the Bible has been as influential to Christian theology as Augustine.
Origen is wrong about stuff, but he had the foresight to say that if he was wrong, he was open to correction.