Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I live in an area where Mardi Gras is in full swing, and I can remember from my upbringing that Fat Tuesday was a last ditch effort at debauchery before the pseudo-spiritual practice of “giving something up for Lent” really began. In my youth I would give up some kind…
Part 1: Observations from the Texts (Matthew 9:14-17, Mark 2:18-22, Luke 5:33-39) The precipitating context for the new wine/old wineskins discussion is people asking Jesus why His disciples did not fast. His immediate answer is that you can’t get the friends of the groom to fast at the bachelor party…
Simply, “progress” means to move forward. In that sense, a slug can progress from one end of the sidewalk to the other. But for us in twenty-first century America, progress means something else. For us, it is almost a synonym for goodness. The slug can only “progress” if the other…
I have the privilege of being able to counsel a lot of women who are seeking abortions. I can tell you that the majority of them are seeking to end their pregnancies not because they feel like it would be a fun thing to do, but because they are scared…
Last night, along with a few online friends, I watched this debate on the meaning of life between William Lane Craig, Rebecca Goldstein, and Jordan Peterson, hosted by Wycliffe College. While watching it, and reflecting upon Peterson’s work more generally (about which I’ve written in the past ), I was…
I’m glad to have been invited to contribute regularly to the Theopolis Institute website. Thank you, readers, for welcoming and joining what I hope will be a venture of integration. Integration itself is what I want to explore. And for me personally, this is the shape of my current integrative…
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Gentiles contributed materials to every sanctuary in the Bible. But the character of their contributions changes. Tracing the changes displays the trajectory of redemptive history. Pharaoh contributes to the tabernacle unwillingly. Pummeled by plagues, he lets Israel go, and as they go they “plunder Egypt.” Call Pharaoh an “involuntary supplier.”…
In his Spirit of Protestantism , Robert McAfee Brown argues that catholicity was a major concern of the Reformation. From the viewpoint of the Reformers, “medieval Christendom had surrendered the notion of catholicity to a limited and distorted understanding of the Christian faith. And the Reformers, in trying to recapture…
B ruce Wilson quoted me at the Huffington Post Blog the other day. To be precise, he quoted Evangelical activist (not, as Wilson says, pastor ) David Lane quoting me, without attributing the quote to me. That’s OK by me. I don’t mind not being quoted in an article with…
You’d think we were living in Jericho, what with all the talk of walls falling down. The Berlin wall is down. Europe has no more borders. Technology ignores the political map of the world. Not to mention all the conceptual boundaries that are being breached. And that’s a good thing,…
In his forthcoming translation of The Writings, Strong As Death Is Love , Robert Alter argues that the writings are late. We know this because of the type of Hebrew that these books use: “Biblical Hebrew, like any language, changed through time. The temporal distance between the sundry strands of…
It’s an old saw, but is it possible to read Augustine’s description of the corruptions of the Roman Republic ( City of God , Book 2) without a wince (or a wink) of recognition? “Only let it remain undefeated, they say, only let it nourish and abound in resources; let…
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