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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Douglas Oakman’s Jesus, Debt, and the Lord’s Prayer spends an inordinate amount of space on source-critical questions concerning the Lord’s prayer. His claim that “Jesus was attempting to mitigate the situation of the indebted (‘sinner’) by promoting the subversion of the imperial tax system in Galilee” (100) is unconvincing. His…
Timothy Carson thinks the number one is a “giddy” number, “delighted in its unity, ecstatic about its own irreducible, undivided self” ( The Square Root of God , 10). It has good reason to be giddy. It is “always a component of, a part of everything else, no matter how…
The opening verses of Proverbs describe the aims of wisdom, its purposes and gifts. The same verses also point to the source of wisdom: Where is skill in living well to be found? Where do we get training and instruction in this art? Ultimately, wisdom has its source in Yahweh.…
P aul reminds the Corinthians that those who served the altar shared in the proceeds of the altar, and applies that model to the church’s responsibility to support minsters of the gospel. That means that the Levitical system of paying priests (cf. Leviticus 7–8; Numbers 18) provides a model for…
Jesus begins the sermon on the mount with the Beatitudes, which are phrased in third person: Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom; blessed are those . . . , for they. That continues through verse 10. Then Jesus basically repeats verse 10, but with a…
God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all, John tells us. What might that mean? God is an eternal fellowship of light, eternal source, eternal radiance, and eternal dispersion that illumines the source and radiance. Light gives life. Nothing can live without light. To say that God…
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