Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I revisited Athanasius’s On the Incarnation in light of Advent this year. A particular passage struck me with a question that I hadn’t considered before. When addressing Adam’s fall, Athanasius says this: “If then there were only the offense and not the consequence of corruption, repentance would have been fine.…
There is much wisdom for kings in the first letter of Paul to the Church in Corinth. As I am preaching through this letter, this is one of the major themes that stands out. That is the theme of the reign of the Christian as we live in union with…
1 The title should not be a surprise to anyone who believes the Bible to be true. According to the Bible, any and every faith and religion that does not conform to the Gospel of Christ are not only false, but ultimately inspired by false spirits. Though Jeffrey Niehaus is…
Names are weighty things, a fact repeatedly evidenced in the biblical narrative. There are several occasions when the names mothers or fathers chose for their children, and the reasons for which the names were chosen, are given extended attention in the text. Much of Genesis 29 and 30, for instance,…
Growing up, I was crestfallen about any Christmas that fell on Sunday. Christmas on Sunday meant going to church when I’d rather lollygag around the Christmas tree in my pajamas, playing with new toys. Christmas on Sunday was a drag. If I still felt that way, I know what I’d…
Growing up in the church in Southern America, there was an oft-used category for leaders in the church. It was a category which was used to justify a variety of rules and restrictions on church leaders. Leaders were to be “above reproach” and that meant not drinking in public or…
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I n a 2009 piece in The Weekly Standard , Sam Schulman argues that gay marriage replicates “a very limited, very modern, and very culture-bound version of marriage. Gay advocates have chosen wisely in this. They are replicating what we might call the ‘romantic marriage,' a kind of marriage that…
It's not clear how much rethinking Gordon Wenham has done to produce his Rethinking Genesis 1-11 . After all, Wenham has been writing illuminating commentary about the early chapters of Genesis for a long time. Re-thought or not, his new little book contains some treasures. He observes the inversion of…
R onald Byars knows that mainline churches are in trouble, and in Finding Our Balance , he lays out a program for renewal. Much depends on restoring a positive notion of authority and a bounded orthodoxy, since “every community, including the ecumenical church, needs boundaries” (46). Doctrinal renewal is not…
Rowan Greer's One Path for All is a study of Gregory of Nyssa's writings on the Christian life. It includes a dozen selections from Gregory's works, and then a series of essays on the pathway of pilgrimage and battle that every baptized person must, along with all the baptized, walk.…
Lisa Deam's A World Transformed is an engaging, meditative study of what she calls the “spirituality of medieval maps.” Maps, she argues, are never neutral. They “show what their users want and need to believe about the world. They allow us to daydream, to plot and scheme, to envision our…
Our very existence is gift. That means that our very existence involves participation in the life of the giver. Paul Griffiths (Decreation, 200) puts it this way: “the fact that you are is sheer unmerited gift, and what you are is a participant in the LORD.” Sin is the rejection…
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