Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Your first born is a novelty. Everything seems special and unique. No one’s child is like yours. Then, over time, you begin to make mistakes. Some strategies don’t work on the additional personalities born into your family, or they simply don’t scale from a practical perspective. With maturity, you realize…
Could Jesus have sinned? Before answering the question, it's best to run through a couple of qualifiers. First, scripture clearly teaches He did not sin. Second, I realize the seeming futility when discussing hypothetical situations. The question of the peccability of Jesus, or Jesus's capacity to sin, is in reality,…
The first time I saw the inside of a prison was in 1999; I was 16. I hadn’t knocked over a fruit stand or been caught stealing hubcaps, I was just an unsuspecting teenager playing piano for a Louisiana gospel group. One Wednesday evening in October, my pastor and leader…
The act of naming carries a lot of weight in the Bible. Naming denotes authority and possession; the namer signifying that he understands the thing named, and therefore possesses the requisite wisdom to rule over it. God set the stage for naming when he named the domains during the first…
This short essay makes an obvious point: Church growth is a matter of the rate of entry into a church relative to the rate of exit from that church. Perhaps church growth literature has long recognized that fact. Yet given the greater focus in church – at least in my…
If you’ve not yet heard of Aaron Renn’s three worlds framework , here’s the quick version: once upon a time, being a Christian was a net social good in American society. Whatever was going on behind the scenes in elite institutions, the general rank-and-file perception of Christianity was positive. That…
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At the Atlantic, Adam Grant describes the findings of his study, Give and Take , where he compiled “evidence that being a ‘giver’ who enjoys helping others can be inefficient in the short run but surprisingly productive in the long run.” He elaborated, “Givers tend to start out with lower…
The Spirit is the Spirit of creation, hovering over the waters. The Spirit is the Messianic Spirit, equipping the Servant of Yahweh with wisdom and understanding, counsel and strength, filling His breath with the power to kill and make alive. But the Spirit who brings new creation out of the…
Each of the seven letters in Revelation 2-3 corresponds to a period of Israel’s history. Jesus’ identification, the assessment of the church, and the promised reward all link together in a complex Old Testament scheme. Believe me for now, because I’m not going to try to prove it. But the…
Jesus judges everyone according to his works (Revelation 2:23), and the letters to the churches present a refined assessment of works. In Ephesus, they do their works but they (or at least the angel) has left his first love. Repentance means returning to the works that they did at the…
What sort of religious vision animates the novels of Cormac McCarthy? That’s the question Todd Edmonson examines in a comparative study of McCarthy and Wendell Berry, Priest, Prophet, Pilgrim . It’s not an easy question to answer, given McCarthy’s famous reticence about himself and his beliefs. The man won’t even…
In her book on The Jews under Roman Rule (225-6), Mary Smallwood observes that the Jews of Alexandria sought to retain their cohesion not only by synagogues but through formation into quasi-civic organizations known as politeumata : “A polieteuma was a recognized, formally constituted corporation of aliens enjoying the right…
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