Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For many people Christmas comes on December 25 and is over December 26. The tree is taken down along with the lights and the other decorations, and everyone begins setting the house in order for the new year. No more Christmas hymns. No more celebrations (well, until New Year’s Eve).…
The Ascension and the Incarnation should not be disconnected in our Christmas thinking or celebrations. As N.T. Wright notes, the ascension is "a central and vital feature without which all sorts of other things start to go demonstrably wrong. . . . where the ascension has been ignored or misunderstood,…
“In the Word was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness.” Thus John describes the incarnation of the Son. He comes as the living and life-giving light of the world. That’s good news. In the beginning, God spoke and light shone…
Christmas is all about Jesus. The angels announce Jesus’ birth, shepherds and wise men come to see Jesus, Herod wants to kill Jesus. We occasionally think of the Father who sent the Son, but we keep returning to the Son made flesh in Bethlehem’s manger. Meanwhile, as always, the Spirit…
Christmas is about many things, but one of the chief things revealed in the gospel of Christmas is the humility of God. We don't often think of humility as an attribute of God. If God is glorious and exalted, we think, He must be haughty and proud and self-centered. We…
John famously begins his Gospel with a piece of theology: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Matthew starts with a genealogy. John celebrates Advent with a hymn, Matthew with a list. For John, Jesus is the Word of creation…
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“Parochial Christianity,” writes Mark Greengrass ( Christendom Destroyed ), “was more than a religious experience. It was a set of rights to benefices which were the key to monopoly revenues (the tithe, collected in various forms) in which patrons, collators and clergymen all had interests. And behind every parish church…
Robinson Crusoe suffers enormous hardship before he ever gets to his island, and the hardship seems disproportionate to the wrong he commits. Is running off to sea against his father's wishes such an enormity? In his classic study of Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography , GA Starr explains that Robinson “defies…
Howard Zehr makes clear in his Little Book of Restorative Justice that “restorative justice” isn't a panacea. It doesn't pretend to replace the the legal system, nor is it necessarily opposed to retribution (12-13). Primarily, restorative justice is an effort to put the principle actors back at the center of…
RJ Snell's Acedia is about acedia. But before he gets to his extended analysis of that vice, he offers a superb, brilliantly brief, ontology and anthropology, drawing on the resources of Trinitarian theology and the book of Genesis. Among other things, Snell emphasizes the gift that is human work, a…
John sees one like a son of man on a cloud, holding a sickle (Revelation 14:14). We assume that He's traveling down to reap the harvest, but is that correct? The original for this son-cloud combination if Daniel 7:13, where it is clear that the Son of Man comes up…
D avid Goldman ( It's Not the End of the World, It's Just the End of You ) argues that “modern art is ideological, as its proponents are the first to admit. It was the ideologues, namely the critics, who made the reputation of the abstract impressionists, the most famous…
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