Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto Me. In 2005, God blessed our family with our third child, our second daughter, whom we named Bethany. As soon as Bethany was born, we knew there was something different about her. Unlike her two older siblings, who were born…
Christian, what is it that we believe? While Creeds like the Nicene and Apostle’s have been fundamental pieces of Christian liturgy and life, the American Church is highly unattached to these classic statements. From this creedal phobia has arisen the popular “No Creed, but Christ” slogan. Such slogan, of course,…
Revisiting William Cavanaugh’s devastating 2009 The Myth of Religious Violence . The myth of Cavanaugh’s title is a well-known one. According to the myth, religion is a distinct sphere of human life and practice from the rest of human social life, a universal impulse in human beings, and is dogmatic,…
19 Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. 20 And when he had so…
An octave is a repetition, a repetition with a difference. It’s not the first note played again , but the first note played at a higher pitch. Octaves have always marked new beginnings. Hebrew boys were circumcised on the eighth day. Firstborn sheep were dedicated to Yahweh on the eighth…
We say Jesus’ resurrection is good news. It wasn’t good news for the disciples on the first Easter. More like perplexing, bewildering news. For others, it wasn’t perplexing, and it certainly wasn’t good. It was plain old bad news. Early in Luke’s gospel, Herod is terrified that Jesus might be…
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Keil and Delitzsch argue that the phrasing of Job 19:25-26 doesn’t directly point to a hope for bodily resurrection. When his flesh is cut off (like a tree; the piel of the same verb is in Isaiah 10:34), he will see God “from ( min ) his flesh.” But, as…
PROVERBS 27:1 Like James (4:13-17), Solomon teaches us that we don’t have control over the future. We are creatures, living in sequence from moment to moment. The past leaves its imprint in our memories and in the artifacts that surround us – books and buildings, roads and institutions. But we…
In a superb article in a 1963 issue of Past & Present , GEM de Ste. Croix asks why Christians were persecuted. He finds the answer in Christian exclusiveness, their refusal to pay homage to the gods, which endangered the pax deorum on which the empire depended. Both common pagans…
The idea of Odysseus as a hero of mind or thought has an ancient pedigree. The Pythagoreans interpreted Odysseus as a thinking man who passed through the underworld on a path of denial of the flesh and escape from the eternal round of reincarnation. Proclus wrote, “Many are the wanderings…
Proverbs 9:1-5: Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn out her seven pillars; s he has slaughtered her meat, she has mixed her wine, she has also furnished her table. She has sent out her maidens, she cries out from the highest places of the city, “w hoever is…
“With what disgust, contempt, and hatred Christ must look upon every second of our lives, the reviewing of which must be a long torture for us, were such a judgment in our future!” These are the words of a Presbyterian minister, writing in a prominent evangelical magazine. He’s trying to…
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