Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
“13th of July, 4:50 pm. I'm sorry. I know that means little at this point, but I am. I tried, I think you would all agree that I tried. To be true, to be strong, to be kind, to love, to be right. But I wasn't. And I know you…
CS Lewis's 1948 essay on “Priestesses in the Church” strikes a reader today as simultaneously quaintly naive and trenchantly prescient. The naive part comes near the beginning, where Lewis describes the decision to take “a revolutionary step.” It would “cut ourselves off from the Christian past and to widen the…
Imagine a version of the Lord of the Rings beginning with Sauron riding into the Shire and lopping off heads in a mad search for the ring, driving Frodo to flight from the beginning, helter-skelter and harried. While, no doubt, some Hollywood exec is at this moment scrambling to reboot…
A Communist Confession of Faith states that the aim of the Communists is “to organize society in such a way that every member of it can develop and use all his capabilities and powers in complete freedom and without thereby infringing the basic conditions of this society.” This aim can…
The story of the Fall enjoys a peculiar place in Christian thought. Together with the creation account in the two chapters that precede it, it is one of the few Old Testament narratives consistently to escape the relative neglect the Hebrew Scriptures often suffer. While the characters of Abraham, Moses,…
In the previous essay, we saw that fire is a work of the Holy Spirit. The two are related so closely that they cannot be separated. Now we turn our attention to the Spirit's relationship to water. Many have understood Spirit baptism to be a dry baptism, one that is…
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Trinity is in the middle of a shake-up, and shake-ups always open opportunities for people to step up into new roles. Pastors Sumpter and Appel will be stretched in all kinds of painful, healthy ways that would be impossible if I stuck around. Prune the tree, clear out the dead…
A homily for a late Octave of Easter celebration. Matthew 28:1: Now after the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the grave. Let us pray Heavenly Father, You raised Your Son Jesus on…
Explaining why baptism need not be repeated, John Knox ( Answers to Some Questions concerning Baptism, 1566 ) writes that “Baptism is the sign of our first entrance into the household of God our Father; by which is signified that we are received in league with him, that we are…
In his Prayer and the Priesthood of Christ , Graham Redding summarizes Calvin’s teaching on the temporary faith: “Calvin draws a distinction between the regenerating faith of the elect and the temporary faith of the reprobate. There are some among the reprobate, he says, who respond positively to the word…
Rudigert Safranski ( Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil ) makes it clear that Heidegger saw his Nazi affiliation as an application of his philosophical stance. For Heidegger, “Decision as a ‘pure’ act is the primary aspect, that jerk that man gives himself in order to jump out of his…
After he published The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies , Marcel Mauss wanted to continue his study of “total social phenomena” with a study of joking relationships. Marcel Founier ( Marcel Mauss: A Biography ) writes: “These were fascinating phenomena that had certain similarities to…
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