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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Russell’s article, mentioned in the previous post, scores a few points against Zizi and a relational emphasis in theological anthropology. His main criticisms, however, do not touch a high Reformed anthropology. One of his criticisms is that Zizi does not pay sufficient attention to the role the world plays in…
Writing in the July 2003 issue of the International Journal of Systematic Theology , one Edward Russell argues that Zizioulas’s relational anthropology fails, in part, because of an inadequate doctrine of sin. I’m with him there. But then he quotes from Alan Torrance, and summarizes the point by saying that…
In Luke 8:16-18, Jesus says that a lamp is made to be set on a lampstand. In context, He is talking about the Word that He preaches, and the fact that it both illuminates and exposes. A light on the lampstand means that “nothing is hidden that shall not become…
There’s a wonderful article in the October 2003 issue of First Things by David B. Hart, an Orthodox theologian who teaches at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota (also home to William Cavanagh, one of the most interesting American theologians writing today). Hart’s article is taken from…
Communion meditation for September 21: In many traditional Eucharistic liturgies, the liturgy begins with the Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy), which includes the words that were sung to Jesus at the time of His entry into Jerusalem: “Hosanna in the Highest. Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the…
My exhortation for September 21: The word of God always divides. It always evokes hostility as well as faith. That is what Jesus says about John’s preaching and ministry in our sermon text this morning, and it was also true of Jesus’ preaching. Both John and Jesus divided Israel by…
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