Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I grew up on the north side of Chicago. My parents were evangelicals and I was raised in the faith. I graduated from a large public high school in which practicing Christians were very few and very far between (though nominal Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox were in abundance), which…
During the recent round table discussion on the future of Protestantism , Peter Leithart advocated a much greater degree of unity in the Church than we presently enjoy. Another participant in the discussion wondered aloud how Leithart's vision would be different from the ministerial associations that presently exist in many…
"But he, wanting to justify himself, said, 'And who is my neighbor?' And Jesus said to him, 'First, your neighbors are the people in your church, then the ones with whom you enjoy greatest doctrinal or ecclesiastical commonality, then those with whom you enjoy less commonality.'" -Said Jesus... never Since…
A number of years ago, I came across something in the Puritan Thomas Goodwin in regard to John 17:22. Goodwin points out that Jesus prays that they (the disciples) might be given the glory of the Father as a means to an end. The end is unity, and the means…
In her prize-winning book, Gilead , Marilynne Robinson uses the pastoral settings of Iowa to challenge ministers to live up to their high callings. One of the most powerful themes in the novel is the pastor’s power to “bless.” The tension in the novel builds as we watch Rev. Ames…
One of the few glaring errors of the Protestant Reformers was the failure to welcome children back to the Lord's Table. Something that seems to go along with this was the exclusion of other kinds of Christians, primarily Roman Catholics, from Holy Communion in Protestant churches. Exclusion of Roman Catholics…
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In Numbers 10, Yahweh instructs Moses to make two silver trumpets. They have several uses. 1) If both are blow, the people assemble at the door of the tent (v. 3). 2) A single blast is a summons only to the leaders (v. 4). 3) A second blast is an…
Anthony Milton recounts ( Catholic and Reformed ) the debates within the seventeenth-century church of England concerning the status of the Catholic church. It was a tricky question. If Anglican divines were too hard on the Catholic church, they provided ammunition for dissenting groups who suggested that the semi-reformed church…
Brad Gregory argues in his Unintended Reformation that it is a historical prejudice to treat “magisterial” Protestantism, which relied on the support of state power as “normative” Protestantism. Even now, when confessional historiography has given way to new paradigms of Reformation scholarship, most attention is paid to the magisterial Reformers.…
What appears to be Paul’s first recorded statement on justification comes in Acts 13, in a sermon at Pisidian Antioch. He briefly recounts the history of Israel, concluding with the resurrection that the promise of forgiveness and justification. Verse 39 (v. 38 in the Greek text) states that “through Him…
The Princeton Proposal on Christian Unity, published in 2003 as In One Body Through the Cross has some bracing passages on the connection of unity and mission. The authors insist that the common life of the church is not merely a means for mission, but an “essential goal of the…
The Princeton Proposal (40-1) observes a shift in the basis and nature of division from the Reformation to the present. Initially, disputes “took the form of argumentative exegesis of Holy Scripture, in which the great Christian teachers and witnesses of the past were called to give testimony.” As divisions unfolded,…
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