Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8) O God the Father, creator of heaven and earth, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, who inspired Creation with the breath of your nostrils, who placed Adam in the…
For nearly a half-century, Sodom has been a key symbol in the American culture wars. On the one side, we have an aggressive movement among homosexuals that has first decriminalized homosexual conduct, then to force cultural and legal recognition of homosexuals as a minority and to normalize homosexual behaviors, finally…
Speaking of the Church, Romans 11:16-17 says, "And if the root be holy, the branches are also. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the root of the fatness of the…
At the end of Isaiah 61, Yahweh's Servant rejoices because the Lord clothes Him with salvation and righteousness. He decks Him like a bridegroom with a garland on His head. He wears jewels like a bride. He is a new bridegroom in a new garden of Eden, a garden of…
Before anything else, a word about “Torah” may be in order. I have been persuaded that “law” is a bad translation of “Torah,” even though it is evident that what is called “Torah” does have commandments, statutes, and ordinances in abundance. Why not “law?” “Law” as a translation for “Torah”…
Few novelists seem as innocent of the temptation to punditry as Jane Austen. Though living through a period that witnessed the birth of an independent United States, the French Revolution and the Terror, the Napoleonic wars and the rise of revolutionary romanticism, and the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, she…
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A comment from W.H. Auden’s Dyer’s Hand rings true: “All those who success in life depends neither upon a job which satisfies some specific and unchanging social need, like a farmer’s, nor, like a surgeon’s, upon some craft which he can be taught by others and improve by practice, but…
David Brondos has an important article on Luther’s notion of justification in the Winter 2004 issue of Pro Ecclesia . Brondos distinguishes between analytic conceptions of justification (that justification is the work of Christ by which one becomes righteous) from synthetic views (that justification is a declaration of the sinner’s…
My Body Given For You, Luke 22:1-62 INTRODUCTION Jesus has been in Jerusalem making a big scene in the temple ?Edriving out the money changers, teaching as if it were His own house, debating with the scribes and chief priests. The Jewish leaders, already angry with Jesus, are further provoked…
Here are a few thoughts on the Auburn Avenue controversy, snipped from an intervention I made on a discussion list. The specific issue in question is Steve Wilkins’s claim that all who are baptized receive “every spiritual blessing in Christ.” First, an exegetical point: Who is Paul addressing when he…
Cartoons have always been a bit subversive: We root for the rabbit against the hunter, and the carnivalesque characters are always preferable to the law-and-order types that they mock. The underdog roadrunner always triumphs over the predatory coyote. And so on. Some recent cartoons continue to be quite clever, especially…
Any idea of cooperation with grace rests on a nature/grace dualism. To say that I cooperate with grace implies that I have some sort of independent power of action that is not always already the product of grace. That is, it depends on the assumption that there is some independent…
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