Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For many people Christmas comes on December 25 and is over December 26. The tree is taken down along with the lights and the other decorations, and everyone begins setting the house in order for the new year. No more Christmas hymns. No more celebrations (well, until New Year’s Eve).…
The Ascension and the Incarnation should not be disconnected in our Christmas thinking or celebrations. As N.T. Wright notes, the ascension is "a central and vital feature without which all sorts of other things start to go demonstrably wrong. . . . where the ascension has been ignored or misunderstood,…
“In the Word was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness.” Thus John describes the incarnation of the Son. He comes as the living and life-giving light of the world. That’s good news. In the beginning, God spoke and light shone…
Christmas is all about Jesus. The angels announce Jesus’ birth, shepherds and wise men come to see Jesus, Herod wants to kill Jesus. We occasionally think of the Father who sent the Son, but we keep returning to the Son made flesh in Bethlehem’s manger. Meanwhile, as always, the Spirit…
Christmas is about many things, but one of the chief things revealed in the gospel of Christmas is the humility of God. We don't often think of humility as an attribute of God. If God is glorious and exalted, we think, He must be haughty and proud and self-centered. We…
John famously begins his Gospel with a piece of theology: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Matthew starts with a genealogy. John celebrates Advent with a hymn, Matthew with a list. For John, Jesus is the Word of creation…
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1 Chronicles 2 begins with a list of the sons of Israel, organized not in birth order but by mother. It is chiastically arranged to place Rachel's sons at the center: A. 6 sons of Leah B. 1 son of Bihah, Rachel's maid (Dan) C. 2 sons of Rachel (Joseph,…
Camille Paglia nails the reason for the unlikely rise of Bernie-mania. It's a strike against the “soulless juggernaut”: “A vote for Bernie Sanders is a vote against the machine, the obscenely money-mad and soulless juggernaut that the Democratic Party has become. Perhaps there was a time, during the Hubert Humphrey…
In Heroes and Hero-Worship , Thomas Carlyle argues that hero-worship is the source of all religion, including Christianity, the form of all loyalty and faith, the foundation of human society. All ranks, he says, “are what we may call a Hero archy (Government of Heroes)—or a Hierarchy, for it is…
In his typological reading of the exodus (1 Corinthians 10), Paul warns the Corinthians not to commit the sins that their fathers committed in the wilderness, specifically idolatry and sexual immorality. By these, and by their grumbling, the Israelites tested the Lord and provoked His anger. These are the same…
Tyranny is a constant in human history, argues Waller Newell in his forthcoming Tyrants . But the character of tyranny is not constant. Newell analyzes three forms of tyranny. The first is the “garden-variety” tyrant, most common in the ancient world: “These are basically men who dispose of an entire…
During February and March of 1974, science fiction writer Philip K. Dick experienced a series of mystical revelations. The source was an entity known as “Zebra,” which revealed that time had stopped back in the mid first-century and that all time since had been an illusion. Guided by Zebra, Dick…
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