Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Every advent of new media creates the justifiable reaction from some that the necessarily accompanied amputation may not be worth the extension made possible by the new tools. This is not unique to the Digital Age. Lamoignon Malesherbes, the French politician who was counsel for the defense of Louis XVI,…
A response to Gage Crowder's " The Hole in our Hope ?" Already, the first pages of the Bible promise a bright future. The story starts with the creation of heaven and earth, where heaven is perfect, but the earth is in a state of formless emptiness. Yet, God takes…
A rejoinder to Bubu Jarmulak's essay, " Embrace Pessimism ." Whereas calumnious critiques are reflections of more on the critic than the work criticized, good critiques are always opportunities for reassessment and improvement if they are received as such . Since its renaissance, the biblical doctrine of postmillennialism—or “optimistic eschatology,”…
Several decades ago, a pastor (and friend) mentioned in passing at one of our regular breakfasts together that he wasn’t satisfied with the usual reading of Jesus’s prayer in Gethsemane, the usual reading being that Jesus asked the Father to avoid the Cross at Gethsemane. We turned to the passage,…
On May 21, 1604, the cathedral of Toledo in Spain held job interviews for the post of choirmaster, the head of music at the church. The position had been vacated when the previous occupant, Alonso Lobo, was poached by the nearby cathedral of Seville, and Toledo needed a replacement who…
Imagine — counterfactually: on the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus held up an empty hand and said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant poured out for you. Drink of it.’ But there was no cup, no wine, nothing. If there’s no sign of the covenant, is there…
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Bultmann notoriously claimed that no one who switches on an electric light or uses the cutting edge technology of the “wireless” can believe in a world of demons and angels. That’s not much of an argument, but insofar as it is one, it seems to be: Electric lights show that…
In an elder meeting this week, Doug Wilson pointed to the promise at Noah’s birth that he would bring rest from work and from the toil arising from the cursed ground (Genesis 6:29). Doug made the interesting point that Noah embodies a reconciliation of herder and farmer, of Cain and…
Another student points out the rhetorical effect of the words of the parents of the blind man in John 9. When the Pharisees ask if the blind man was their son, and born blind, they say “Ask him. He is of age.” When they do ask him, the blind man…
Jesus’ trial before Pilate takes place near Passover, but it’s a Day of Atonement, as Barabbas is selected to go free and Jesus sent outside the camp bearing the sins of His people. A student, Stephanie Beauchamp, points to another Day-of-Atonement theme in John’s account. Throughout the narrative, Pilate is…
According to Thomas Heilke, “the church under Constantine is ‘imperialized,’ and made ‘subservient’ to the interests of the empire.” That judgment rests partly on factual errors (e.g., Constantine took charge of the church’s affairs, administered church discipline, decided on orthodoxy by presiding at Nicea). But it also rests on a…
Gerard Schlabach, though working in a Yoderian tradition, warns that wholesale condemnation of “Constantinianism” is a mistake: “there is even something right about the vision of Christendom - as that societas in which every right relationship with God is rightly ordering and reintegrating every relationship and all of life.” Christendom…
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