Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
[This essay was originally published in 1988. Given the situation that our new national socialists are getting the world into, I thought it might be useful to reprint it here. – JBJordan] The Bible has quite a bit to say about gold, silver, and precious stones, and the Bible always…
I wrote this elsewhere and was encouraged to put it here. It is a comment on what a pastor is. Today, this is not very well understood, and God’s people suffer because of it. There are four professions: medicine, education, law, and religion. Each of these, when done at a…
James Jordan recently pointed out in private conversation how appropriate it is, in John’s Gospel, that Nicodemus is present both to ask Jesus about being born again, and to see Jesus re-enter the womb of the mother. Nicodemus rhetorically asks, “How can a man be born when he is old?…
This is a problematic and much discussed passage. I’ve been discussing it in another forum, and have decided to move it here and present some very preliminary observations about it. One large question is this: Who is the speaker here and what is his situation? Traditionally, the speaker is seen…
1. The current issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction includes a good fantasy novella by John C. Wright, who since his conversion has been writing Christianly. This is a fine fantasy with nods to C. S. Lewis and Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and probably Gene Wolfe as well.…
“It is an experience of our days that the spoken name of Jesus alone exercises an unforeseen power; and the effort which it cost to speak this name is perhaps connected to some faint apprehension of the power which is inherent within it. Wherever the name of Jesus Christ is…
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INTRODUCTION Yahweh promises to do a new thing for Judah (Isaiah 42:9; 43:19; 48:6). He brings Israel from Babylon, and reorganizes the geopolitical landscape to make a new relation of Israel and the nations. THE TEXT “Thus says the Lord to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have…
From Ephesians 5, John Paul II ( Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology Of The Body ) draws the conclusion that marriage provides a model for the “sacrament of redemption,” the historical and visible revelation of the mystery that has been hidden from the foundations of the world.…
Albert Borgmann ( Crossing the Postmodern Divide ) writes, somewhat surprisingly, of “postmodernism realism” as an alternative to modernism and hypermodernism. It is only surprising, he argues, because we misconstrue the character of modernism’s toxic triple mix of Bacon, Descartes, and Locke, of domination, method, and individualism. Not postmodernism but…
In his Rhythm of Gods Grace , Arthur Paul Boers (a Mennonite theologian!) gives a brief history of daily prayer. In the fourth century, he notes, “it was normal for most churches to have morning and evening prayer every day. Many participated. Christian leaders expected regular attendance. Ambrose of Milan…
Bonhoeffer ( Ethics ) challenges what he thinks of as the pseudo-Lutheran view of vocation. Vocation is not merely a demand to stay within the already-settled limits of a job, an office, a set of procedures. It is a call from Jesus to follow Jesus. “This call does indeed summon…
Bonhoeffer ( Ethics ) raises the question, What is real? His answer is the Sunday School answer: Jesus. If this is true, then Christian ethics faces no tragic dilemmas. We are not confronted with pressure to tailor our witness or action in the name of Jesus to some given reality…
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