Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
My first title for this series of posts was “Evangelical Sacramental Ecumenism” – not exactly a clickbait title. But those three words, evangelical, sacramental, and ecumenical, say a lot: The centrality of the gospel; a focus on baptism, bread, and wine; and the quest for visible unity among diverse churches.…
I can imagine someone reading the title of this essay and saying to himself, "I have two questions. First, what in the world is “contextualization”?" Second, even before hearing the answer to the first question, he may wonder, "what does baptism have to do with such an awkward and vague…
Deuteronomy 21:18-21 My colleague Ralph Smith has recently written on this passage, here . I entirely agree with Ralph's thrust, which is typological, that the passage is ultimately aimed at the entire nation of Israel itself as the rebellious son. But what I am thinking is from another perspective, perhaps…
In the previous article in this series, I drew attention to the threefold meaning of the Spirit of God descending as a dove on Jesus at His baptism. On a related note, I also argued that 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and Titus 3:3-7 were parallel passages that addressed the same issues…
The National Anthem protest is misguided. So too the conservative backlash. The Church’s response has been disappointing. I address each in turn. The greatest triumph of the American Civil Rights Movement was its seizing of the moral high ground in American politics. It did so by insisting only on those…
Peter Leithart’s book, The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism , argues that baptism is parallel to and the fulfillment of the old covenant rite of priestly ordination. But this is not something explicitly stated in the New Testament. Why, then, should we believe it? Leithart shows in…
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The crucial association in Paul’s reading of the Abraham story (Galatians 4) is the link between Hagar, Sinai, and slavery. It also seems to be the weakest link. Is it simply a geographic association? Could the association turn on a pun? Hagar is a “bondwoman,” paidiske in Greek (Galatians 4:22-23,…
When the fourth trumpet sounds, the sun, moon, and stars are plagued (Revelation 8:12). A third of the stars are darkened, and day and night ceases to “shine” for a third of the time (two four-hour periods of darkness). The fourth trumpet partially reverses the fourth day of creation, when…
In one of the many wonderful passages in his Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple , Matthew Levering points to the Abelardian dimensions of Thomas’s atonement theology: “for Aquinas, as for Abelard, the person who meditates upon Christ’s passion is able to ‘[know] thereby how much God loves him, and…
In response to a critique of Thomas Aquinas’s views on the law from Michael Wyschogrod, Matthew Levering argues ( Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple ) that “the Mosaic law . . . is still observed by Christians ” (his emphasis). Exactly right. And it gets better when Levering elaborates,…
We complain about speed a lot. Everything moves too fast to grasp or control. So we find ways to slow down - slow food stands against the McDonaldization of our diets. There’s even a World Institute for Slowness out there. But we don’t want everything to move slow, argues Lutz…
Martinus de Boer argues in his Galatians commentary that while “the expression ‘the works of the flesh’ . . . is reminiscent of the expression ‘works of the law,’” they are not equivalent. In fact, they aren’t grammatically parallel at all: “whereas the works of the law are the deeds…
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