Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I grew up in the 1950s. This was before the "Sixties" and the democratization, informalization, and general cheapening of the church and her worship. Ministers were Father Donovan, Pastor Eckhart, Reverend MacPherson, Mister (Episcopal) Parker, and Brother Smith. Liturgical speech was high language, sounding kind of like the King James…
Metaphor exerts a surprisingly powerful influence within our thinking. Although it is easily dismissed as little more than a figure of speech, when we attend more closely to the ways in which we use it, metaphor’s importance swiftly becomes more apparent. Although many of our metaphors have become quite invisible…
What is a tree, scientifically speaking? A mere googling gives the following answer: “a woody perennial plant, typically having a single stem or trunk growing to a considerable height and bearing lateral branches at some distance from the ground.” We can increase detail by describing its family, genus, species and…
The majority of Western evangelical Christians rarely, if ever, fast as a form of spiritual discipline. In our culture, fasting is more connected with dieting than worship, the other side of our deeply ambiguous fascination with food. Food is everywhere. We eat more than ever before, at greater speed, and…
A Grammar of Creation An understanding of the visual-musical language of the Bible must begin with Genesis 1. This is fortunate, because when explaining biblical types to academics, as opposed to children, one is repeatedly forced to start from scratch. From birth, a healthy child is attuned to rhythm and…
In an inverse Eden, a land laid waste, one works alone tending the trash. There are none like him in all the earth, inquisitive, playful and most drawn to those mysterious, dancing bipedal creatures who lost earth and left it to go wandering the vast wilderness of space. Humans have…
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Matthew 26:31-75 is organized mainly as a series of small chiasms The first is in verses 31-35: A. Jesus predicts the fall of the disciples, based on Scripture, vv 31-32 B. Peter protests, v 33 C. Jesus predicts Peter’s triple denial, v 34 B’. Peter protests again, v 35a A’.…
Responding to Sinclair Ferguson’s defense of infant baptism in Baptism: Three Views , Anthony Lane attacks the use of “sign and seal” as the “controlling framework” for one’s theology of baptism.  He points out that for Ferguson the “proper” function of baptism is to “display and portray God’s grace,” and…
The notion that salvation is illumination is often criticized for being too intellectualist.  Jaroslav Pelikan sums up the criticisms of Athanasius’ use of this image by saying “the impression was almost unavoidable that the enlightenment given in salvation applied primarily to the mind and the intellect” and his language sometimes…
Why the incarnation?  The eternal Son enters humanity to stretch it to its limits, and beyond.  By becoming flesh and living and dying and rising in flesh, the Son makes it big enough for God to dwell in. More precisely, the Spirit: The Son stretches out the flesh He assumes,…
Every word we speak, Derrida argues, wanders off on its own, and we can’t protect or control it. True enough with regard to human words.  But God’s Word is a living Person, the eternal Son, a Word equal to the speaker with the resources to fend for Himself.  This Word,…
In the previous post, Jim Rogers asked what can morally be done about enemies who use innocents are human shields?  That’s a difficult question, but I’ve found Daniel Bell’s discussion helpful ( Just War as Christian Discipleship: Recentering the Tradition in the Church rather than the State ). Bell takes…
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