Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I revisited Athanasius’s On the Incarnation in light of Advent this year. A particular passage struck me with a question that I hadn’t considered before. When addressing Adam’s fall, Athanasius says this: “If then there were only the offense and not the consequence of corruption, repentance would have been fine.…
There is much wisdom for kings in the first letter of Paul to the Church in Corinth. As I am preaching through this letter, this is one of the major themes that stands out. That is the theme of the reign of the Christian as we live in union with…
1 The title should not be a surprise to anyone who believes the Bible to be true. According to the Bible, any and every faith and religion that does not conform to the Gospel of Christ are not only false, but ultimately inspired by false spirits. Though Jeffrey Niehaus is…
Names are weighty things, a fact repeatedly evidenced in the biblical narrative. There are several occasions when the names mothers or fathers chose for their children, and the reasons for which the names were chosen, are given extended attention in the text. Much of Genesis 29 and 30, for instance,…
Growing up, I was crestfallen about any Christmas that fell on Sunday. Christmas on Sunday meant going to church when I’d rather lollygag around the Christmas tree in my pajamas, playing with new toys. Christmas on Sunday was a drag. If I still felt that way, I know what I’d…
Growing up in the church in Southern America, there was an oft-used category for leaders in the church. It was a category which was used to justify a variety of rules and restrictions on church leaders. Leaders were to be “above reproach” and that meant not drinking in public or…
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John Pinheiro's Missionaries of Republicanism is, according to the subtitle, a “religious history of the Mexican-American War.” He shows how the war was infused with religious themes, linking American Protestantism with Anglo-Saxonism and Manifest Destiny. Near the heart of the religious justification of the war was anti-Catholicism: The United States…
John condemns harlot Babylon for her luxury. The Greek word is strenos , which is used only once in the LXX, to describe the “complacency” of Sennacherib (2 Kings 19:28). The Hebrew term behind it is sha'anan , which describe the women of Jerusalem (Isaiah 32:9, 11), those who are…
In a contribution to the 1988 volume, Eliminating Racism , Thomas Pettigrew explained the uniqueness of the African-American experience, which “uniquely combines a long history of being simultaneously an integral part and on the outside of the society” (23). Few of even the most racist Americans consider blacks to be…
When Israel was deported to Babylonian exile, it would have been natural for Israelites to reason that they ought to limit the size of their families and wait for a return to the land. It might even be best to avoid marriage/ After all, who wants to support a wife…
Since Ferdinant Toennies introduced the categories, sociologists have often contrasted the gemeinschaftlich forms of social life in traditional societies with the gesellschaftlich forms in modernity. As Nancy Ammerman explains the distinction, the former are marked by “affectivity, particularism, ascription, and diffuseness. In such communities, relationships had emotional depth, were idiosyncratic,…
Charles Bambach's Heidegger's Roots is an attempt to trace the roots of Heidegger's affinity for Naziism. The “roots” of the title have a double meaning - both the intellectual background to Heidegger and Heidegger's formulation of Bodenstandigkeit , “rootedness.” Early on, Bambach summarizes Ernst Bloch's “caustic and penetrating” response to…
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