A poem for Advent by the Metaphysical poet and Anglican divine John Donne, from La Corona, a seven-part sonnet cycle. Nativitie Immensity cloystered in thy deare wombe, Now leaves his welbelov’d imprisonment, There he hath made himselfe to his intent Weake enough, now into our world to come; But Oh, for thee, for him, hath th’Inne…

Jesus is the center and substance of Scripture. For our forebears in faith this is an uncontroversial and essential assumption for exegesis. Apart from faith in Christ—itself a gift from the Spirit—Scripture will not open itself. And so, as Christopher Hall puts it, the church fathers and reformers “read Scripture through the prism of Christ’s…

John Donne on Luke 2:6–7   Immensitie cloystered in thy dear wombe, Now leaves his welbelov’d imprisonment, There he hath made himselfe to his intent Weake enough, now into our world to come; But Oh, for thee, for him, hath th’Inne no roome? Yet lay him in this stall, and from the Orient, Starres and…