Author: Michael Salsaa
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Blindness II: the blinding judgment of Grace
It seems that a large portion of what God tried to get us to see is His grace. We tend to be blind to it, because grace is very different from our natural knowledge, which arises from our vision into how humans and the world function around us. We look for cause and effect, we…
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Blindness I: From Vision to Insight
What do you see? This is one of the existential questions that God asks of each of us. Vision and light are some of the most occurring themes in the bible, and for an important reason. It seems as if God takes us on a spiritual journey of sight and blindness, light and darkness, insight…
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Grace as God’s True Light
Today, we will start a three-part discussion on light and blindness. It seems as if God takes us on a spiritual journey of sight and blindness, light and darkness, insight and ignorance. In the very first chapter of the bible the Creation and the manifestation of Light together convey a certain truth about God. Let…
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Death and Grace
I have been fascinated by the topic of death for years now. Mystics and sages say that the only way to live life fully is to accept our deaths. That’s easy, you may say, I’m fully aware that I’m going to die, I’m just a human after all. But Ernest Becker begs to differ with…
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The Judgment of Grace, or the Transformative Power of Grace?
We previously discussed the parables of the kingdom of heaven that Jesus spoke to the people during his ministry. When we substitute “Grace” for the “kingdom of Heaven (KOH)”, many of these parables take on a fascinating new perspective and even offer a coherent understanding of what Jesus was trying to teach us about. Take…
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A Suffering God—Part 2
We started our discussion on the identity of God by pointing out that we rely on images from the Old Testament to learn and understand more about who God is. These images present us with rich metaphors about God. I would like to start today’s class with a quick description of what a metaphor is. …
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A Suffering God—Part 1
Note: large segments of this class have been taken from The Suffering of God by Terence Fretheim. Today we will continue our discussion that we started last time on the character of God in the Old Testament. Last time, we discussed how we often get hung up on the question: Do you believe in God?…
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Who is God (of the Old Testament)?
Michael: Today will be the first part of a two-part discussion on the character of God in the Old Testament. I will be heavily relying on and quoting from the book The Suffering of God by Terence Fretheim. We often get hung up on the question: Do you believe in God? And forget about the…
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The Clock and the Sabbath
Note: An updated version of Michael’s talk was published on January 5, 2025) For the last two weeks, we have been discussing the Sabbath as a sacred time of rest and Grace. A statement that Dr. Weaver has mentioned in both of the classes is going to be the starting point of our discussion today,…