Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For many people Christmas comes on December 25 and is over December 26. The tree is taken down along with the lights and the other decorations, and everyone begins setting the house in order for the new year. No more Christmas hymns. No more celebrations (well, until New Year’s Eve).…
The Ascension and the Incarnation should not be disconnected in our Christmas thinking or celebrations. As N.T. Wright notes, the ascension is "a central and vital feature without which all sorts of other things start to go demonstrably wrong. . . . where the ascension has been ignored or misunderstood,…
“In the Word was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness.” Thus John describes the incarnation of the Son. He comes as the living and life-giving light of the world. That’s good news. In the beginning, God spoke and light shone…
Christmas is all about Jesus. The angels announce Jesus’ birth, shepherds and wise men come to see Jesus, Herod wants to kill Jesus. We occasionally think of the Father who sent the Son, but we keep returning to the Son made flesh in Bethlehem’s manger. Meanwhile, as always, the Spirit…
Christmas is about many things, but one of the chief things revealed in the gospel of Christmas is the humility of God. We don't often think of humility as an attribute of God. If God is glorious and exalted, we think, He must be haughty and proud and self-centered. We…
John famously begins his Gospel with a piece of theology: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Matthew starts with a genealogy. John celebrates Advent with a hymn, Matthew with a list. For John, Jesus is the Word of creation…
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With surprising regularity, Paul uses material images, often to describe his ministry to the churches. He and his helpers are like nurses to the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 2:7). He is a laboring woman in Galatia (4:19), and he nurses the Corinthians with milk, since they are infants in Christ (1…
Tom Engelhardt knows that wars can be won and that won wars can change geopolitical conditions: “don’t think for a moment that war never solved a problem, or achieved a goal for an imperial or other regime, or that countries didn’t regularly find victory in arms. History is filled with…
Isaiah 63 begins with a question: Who is this? He comes from the direction of Edom, his clothing is stained (the Heb. verb is chametz , “leavened”. Yahweh answer: “I speaker of righteousness, mighty to save” (v. 1; Heb. for last phrase rab lehoshiy’a ). Verse 2 asks another question:…
Michael Guichard and Lionel Marti offer an outstanding survey of purity in ancient Mesopotamia in their contribution to Purity and the Forming of Religious Tradition . Among the many details, two particularly stand out. The first was the connection between purity and luminosity, purity and glory. Referring to Sumerian terms…
Jesus gives His Spirit to His Bride, and the Bride is so filled with the Spirit that she and the Spirit speak with a single voice, which is the voice of the Word whose Spirit it is. Filled with the Spirit, the Bride longs for the Lord’s coming: The Spirit…
Robert Ellis ( Games People Play ) has a lot of critical things to say about sports, but the aim of his book is to analyze and ultimately to defend sports in theological terms. He’s comfortable with the Victorian Settlement. He does that in part by correlating the results of…
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