Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The doctrine of justification is precious among Protestants. And it should be. The fact that God has declared our sins forgiven and that we have a righteous standing in the sight of God united to Christ is comforting and brings great joy. Unfortunately, the biblical teaching on justification is, many…
The Old Testament priests were given a number of seemingly disparate duties. As everyone knows, the priests led the sacrificial worship of Israel; only the priests could sprinkle blood on the altar or within the tabernacle, and only they could approach the altar to turn sacrificial animals into smoke. But…
M issional ecclesiology is all the rage these days, but for many being “missional” means downplaying or even eliminating concern for the “internal” life of the church, particularly its liturgical life. Missional and liturgical, mission and communio , are locked in zero-sum combat. That cannot be right. The liturgy is…
An old friend of mine, now passed into Heaven, started to say this in relationship to his sometimes troubled family, in the last quarter of his life, "I just had to take responsibility for the whole thing..." That was the seed for a new reading of the Gospel for me,…
She departed the port, dressed in her best ceremonial regalia, with tassels and flags fluttering from her mast and rigging. She stood tall, robed in mist, crowned in white, and backlit by the rising sun. There she sat, shimmering and spotless; with a perfect ragtop, and a full tank of…
John the Baptist is presented in the gospels as the fulfillment of the Old Testament promise that God would send His messenger to prepare the way for the coming of the glory of the Lord (Is. 40), and the promise to send Elijah before Him to turn the people to…
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John Walton insists that Genesis doesn't "attempt to address cosmology in modern terms or address modern questions. The Israelites received no revelation to update their 'scientific' understanding of the cosmos." Then too: "Throughout the entire Bible, there is not a single instance in which God revealed to Israel a science…
In Policing America's Empire , Alfred McCoy spells out the analogies between America's intervention in the Philippines at the beginning of the 20th century and our invasion of Iraq at the end. He thinks the comparison is most illuminating when we highlight the differences between the two: "The spectacular capture…
In a 1975 article in the wonderfully-named journal Palimpsest , Richard H. Thomas traced the movement “from porch to patio,” showing how the change in domestic architecture both reflected and reinforced changes in social structure. The porch, he points out, facilitated conversation between the inhabitants of a house, their neighbours…
Alfred McCoy has had a lively life. While still in grad school, he testified before Congress about his discoveries of CIA alliances with drug lords in Southeast Asia. He's been subjected to surveillance and had his phone tapped. And along the way he has made America's global power a matter…
D. Valdez ( German Philhellenism ) discerned two forms of interest in Hellenism among German intellectuals of the 18th and 19th centuries: "The first, weighted toward the earlier, Homeric, and more archaic period of Greek life, celebrated a raw, tumultuous humanity, in harmony with nature, reveling in the primitive and…
Stephen Jay Gould famously offered a solution to the religion v. science conflict: Consign each to its separate corner; they belong to separate domains; they don't conflict because they don't overlap. Problem solved. Not so fast, says John Lennox ( Seven Days That Divide the World ). One problem is…
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