Doves and Eagles

The Holy Spirit is pictured in the Bible as descending like a dove, in the accounts of Jesus’ baptism (Matthew 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32).

But there is nowhere in the Bible where human believers are pictured as flying like doves. Well, there is Psalm 55:6, but this is an unfulfilled wish rather than a God-given picture. Humans are likened to doves in a few other places in the Old Testament, especially in the Song of Songs, and in Matthew 10:16, but the point of comparison is never flight – except possibly in Hosea 11:11. That is to say, it is nowhere suggested in the Bible that humans will or should fly like doves.

But what we do find several times in the Bible is a promise that believers will fly or soar like eagles. See for example Exodus 19:4 (the Exodus compared with the flight of an eagle); Deuteronomy 32:11 (Israel as a young eagle being taught to fly); Isaiah 40:31 (“those who hope in the LORD … will soar on wings like eagles”); and Revelation 12:13 (the woman, symbolising Israel or the church, is given the wings of an eagle).

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An Anabaptist Anglican

My blogging friend Tim Chesterton is planning a sabbatical from his ministry as an Anglican priest in Canada. He will be returning to his home country, here in England, to study the Anabaptist movement. And he has started a new blog “An Anabaptist Anglican” just to record his thoughts about this. He has already given a summary of Anabaptist teaching which I find very attractive, as I mentioned in a previous post.

I will follow Tim’s experiences with interest – although perhaps not for the next few weeks, for Tim seems to be giving up blogging for Lent. I admire him for doing this, but don’t intend to copy him.

Welcome to the new "Speaker of Truth"

Welcome to this new version of my blog “Speaker of Truth”, hosted on my own website and powered by WordPress 2.1. I have imported all of the posts and comments from the old version, hosted and powered by Blogger. The old version of the blog remains accessible but is closed to new comments.

For the moment I am using the default WordPress template, but I intend to change to something more distinctive soon.