Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If utopia is a perfect place or at least the best possible social arrangement, it must be a very dull place where any change is a change for worse and not for better, where nothing can be new and good at the same time. There can be no conflict in…
Christians, even those who say much about ‘incarnational’ faith, can say surprisingly little about the way that God claims our bodies . Perhaps this is most striking in treatments of baptism, where the intensely bodily character of the rite would especially seem to invite comment. Even if the term ‘baptism’…
Dear Pastor, I believe the locus of the difference between us is your statement here: "There are mothers who choose to risk their lives and even die to preserve the fetus, there are those who wouldn't. There are the circumstances of the individual, family, income, community, illness, risk factors, etc..…
New Year’s resolutions for weight loss are practically on the liturgical calendar of America. Somewhere around the beginning of a new year, people resolve that they will get in better shape. Some are made to feel guilty by the obesity police in our country (whose standards are, many times, very…
Click HERE for Part 1 After sending my letter to the local pastors, I received a long and thoughtful post from one of the local pastors, and it was sent not just to me, but to all of the pastors whom I e-mailed. Unfortunately, I do not feel I can…
Narrative and story have been all the rage in theology for the last few decades. The attractions are obvious. Narrative theologians favor the active, unpredictable, vibrant God of Scripture to the impersonal first principle of philosophical theology. Narrative theologians reject the notion that theologians need to justify their work by…
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Provan has this insightful comment: “A central theme of [Jesus’] ministry, enacted in his own life, is that the proper way in which to respond to the nature of reality is to give away one’s life rather than hold on to it, to open our hands and let things go…
Despite the problems with his arguments about authorship, Provan ‘s commentary on Ecclesiastes (NIV Application) is quite good. He rightly translates HEBEL as “vapor” or “breath” rather than as “vanity,” and does a good job of showing how deeply that change transforms our reading of the book. The following are…
God is unchanging. The calendar changes, but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We have trouble thinking about the same thing for ten minutes, but “the Glory of Israel . . . is not a man that He should change His mind.” Our plans shift rapidly from…
The style industry exists to keep producing new styles, to keep everyone thinking that they have to buy a new wardrobe each year to keep up, to bring shame to everyone uncool enough to wear last season’s colors . A celebrity, someone once said, is a person well known for…
Ecclesiastes 2:24-25: There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen that it is from the hand of God. For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him? Many Christians have concluded…
Iain Provan doubts that Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes . One of the “striking” bits of evidence is “that many of the later passages in Ecclesiastes appear to be written from a non-Solomonic point of view (i.e., from the perspective of the subject rather than the ruler, e.g., 5:8-9; 8:1-9).” It’s a…
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