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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Drawing on the work of Oliver O'Donovan, Jamie Smith offers a critique of natural law as an adequate grounding for political theology. Positively, Smith argues that “he public task of the church is not just to remind the world of what it (allegedly) already knows (by ‘natural' reason), but to…
At the beginning of his Silence and Praise , Ryan Hansen summarizes several of the recent approaches to understanding the cosmology of the book of Revelation. The most popular today borrows from the sociology of knowledge to suggest that John's writing creates a “symbolic universe” or “worldview” for his readers.…
The emphasis on chastity, virginity, and lack of defilement from women does not have to do with misogyny or asceticism. In biblical perspective, it means that this is both a liturgical and a military assembly. When Israel arrived at Sinai, the men had to keep themselves from women so as…
In his Gift and the Unity of Being , Antonio Lopez claims that “Christ's kenotic gift of self restores unity with God. The redemption of the gift allows man to see that unity with God is possible and that it generates a whole that is greater than its parts. St.…
Douglas Rushkoff's Nothing Sacred is rather all over the place (as one might say if one had a thickly superior British accent). The Judaism he favors isn't a “traditional community with concrete values and well-defined rules” (1) but one that “stresses transparency, open-ended inquiry, assimilation of the foreign, and a…
Explaining the power of liturgical habit, Paul Griffiths ( Decreation ) offers writing as an example of the self-forgetful, and world-forgetful, character of habit. It's one of the best descriptions of the experience of writing that I have come across. A few preliminaries to make sense of the analysis: Griffiths…
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