Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
This was a newspaper column that I wrote for the Minco Millennium back in January of 2000 when I had first moved to Minco, Oklahoma to pastor First Reformed Presbyterian Church. I wasn’t able to catch the recent performance of the musical, Godspell , in Oklahoma City. However, my dad…
Awhile back, there was a big debate among Evangelicals as to whether one had to trust Jesus “as Lord” as well as “as savior. Some claimed that one could be saved by Jesus through a faith that did not involve submission to him as Lord. Others claimed that one must…
I originally wrote this a few weeks ago in April 2002 as a column in the local newspaper, The Minco Millennium under the title “Faith & Follow-Through.” Several passages in the book of Hebrews are difficult for Protestants to swallow. The author affirms the once-and-for-all work of Christ and yet…
N. T. Wright’s commentary on Romans is destined to be a classic. The introduction alone is worth the hefty price of the book — but the exegesis itself is, well, priceless. I will not attempt a full review — these are just miscellaneous thoughts and random reflections — but I…
At an inn in the town of Lystra three men sat around a corner table. All three were well-known disciples of Joshua Messiah, members of what the town called a new cult, the Way. The short gray-haired man with the enormous beard was clearly restless. “This is taking too long,”…
Recently there has been some surprising debate in some circles over where Paul summarizes his Gospel. I say “surprising” because many Evangelical Bible scholars have held, for quite some time, that Paul’s Gospel is encapsulated in Romans chapter 1, verse 3 and 4. Here is the passage in context: Paul,…
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In his recently re-released Bioethics: A Primer for Christians , Gilbert Meilaender discusses baptism to formulate a Christian understanding of the person. Baptism, he points out, is a communal act but also individualizing: “the first thing to note about baptism is that it is a deeply individualizing act. Our parents…
In his book, Erotic Faith , Robert M. Polhemus offers an intriguing analysis of Bronzino’s Allegory with Venus and Cupid . The allegory suggests that “worship of Venus . . . blinds one to the menace of time and death.” Seeking sexual fulfillment means “betraying self, God, and humankind as…
In his classic study of romanticism and literary theory, The Mirror and the Lamp , MH Abrams points out the crucial change in images of the mind - from the mind as a “mirror” of outside reality to the mind as a “lamp” or a “fountain” that determines what it…
Hannah Arendt claimed that “An object is cultural depending on the duration of its permanence: its durable character is opposed to its functional aspect, that aspect which would make it disappear from the phenomenal world through use and wear and tear . . . . Culture finds itself under threat…
At the climactic moment of reversal in the court scene in Merchant of Venice , Portia tells Shylock: “This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood.” “Jot” comes to English through the Greek iota , which is linked to the Hebrew YOD through Jesus’ usage in Matthew 5.…
spectral rime-frosted trees in early morning moonlight cast shadows on the pasture
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