Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, who was declared the Son of God…
With the surprising discovery of the Nelda Boswell scroll historians have deciphered its contents and concluded that the apostle Paul returned to the region of Galatia shortly after he wrote the letter that we call Galatians. The evidence suggests that a number of local pastors, elders, and deacons, along with…
Second Temple Judaism was a form of covenantal nomism, according to E. P. Sanders’ terminology. This means that Torah-observance was a way of expressing loyalty to the Lord of the covenant who had graciously elected Israel. I think Sanders’ view (taken up in bits and pieces and with some modifications…
We often hear that the key to Christian obedience is thankfulness for what God has done. But the Bible stresses faith and hope much more than gratitude. The Baptist pastor and author John Piper has written, “Nowhere in the Bible is gratitude connected explicitly with obedience as a motivation. We…
One of the questions that is commonly asked about Tom Wright regards his teaching about how Paul uses the term “the righteousness of God.” Since Wright’s interpretation of the term in Paul’s epistles is commonly mentioned in passing but rarely analyzed, it seems like a good idea to explicitly spell…
If God promised a certain land to the seed of Abraham, saying that it would be theirs “forever” (Gen. 13:15), why do Reformed churches teach that the Jews permanently lost their right to the land? What about all these Old Testament “forever” promises and prophesies made to the Jews? How…
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Notoriously, the Marquis de Sade stole some consecrated wafers, pushed them into a prostitute’s vagina, and had sex, saying, “Avenge yourself, if you are God.” He meant this as blasphemy, and it is. But his blasphemy only shows just how insurmountable Jesus is. Sade thought himself innovative, but he only…
Individualism treats us as splendidly isolated beings, our real selves fountains of ideas and desires but impenetrable to anything from the outside. How ever did we get this idea? By ignoring the body. If the body is at all a clue to the secret of human life, it shows us…
To grasp what Rosenstock-Huessy says about tribalism, we need to recognize that he sees the tribe as one moment in the development of ancient civilization. In The Fruit of Lips, he describes the origin of the tribe: “The ancient cycle began in the primitive tribe, among a little group of…
In his chapter on the Bolshevik Revolution, Rosenstock-Huessy spends a number of pages digressing about Marx and Marxism. The following notes summarize his treatment of Marxism. Marx, Rosenstock-Huessy begins, is the culmination of the protest against the “order of things” from within Western civilization itself. Marx is biographically well-positioned for…
Rosenstock-Huessy’s brief essay on Descartes (included in I Am An Impure Thinker, extracted from Out of Revolution) highlights a number of recurring themes in Rosenstock-Huessy’s work: He discusses his own formula, Respondeo etsi mutabor, in contrast to the cogito of Descartes; he attacks the abstractions of science and modern thought;…
Anti-sacramental, anti-ritual evangelicalism emphasizes a personal relationship with God, but tends to encourage what Anthony Giddens calls “pure relationship,” a relationship that is not tacked down with external anchors and supports. A live-in relationship, without benefit of the rites and legalities of marriage, is a pure relationship. Evangelicalism tends to…
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