Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
First John 5.16-17: If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life–to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for…
A few years back I read Lesslie Newbigin’s little book Truth and Authority in Modernity . 1 I was particularly impressed with his argument in chapter 2 “The Mediation of Divine Authority.” Now, maybe this is old hat to many of you, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard it…
Baptism is not Christian circumcision. There’s a lot of loose talk to that effect in Presbyterian circles; but it’s not accurate. The old world rite of circumcision was fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Baptism unites us to Christ and therefore makes us participate in the circumcision of…
In recent years I’ve observed a number of Reformed-type churches trying to institute corporate handraising in certain sung parts of worship. This often does not seem to work very well. Some people don’t do it. Some do it half-way. Some do it with one hand. Some dramatically stretch to the…
Most modern scholars recognize that behind Arius’s campaign to differentiate Jesus from God was the Hellenistic theological conviction that the high God cannot suffer. Rowan Williams argues that Arius had the right idea about divine suffering, but the wrong idea of God, which “puts the unavoidable question of what the…
Charismatics have been much maligned for constantly “praising the Lord.” They would say if you hit your finger with a hammer, you should instantly say, “Thank you Jesus that You let me hit my finger…” This of course, as we all know, is stupid. There was once a lady who…
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From the whirlwind, Yahweh reveals His creative power to Job, challenging Job with a repeated “where were you when. . . ?” The focus is on Yahweh’s power to create, but several times He describes His power as the power to set up dates and doors. It was Yahweh who…
Comparative literature is a standard discipline in our universities. Comparative arts is less familiar. Daniel Albright has written a treatise on comparative art in his recent Panaesthetics . Debates about the unity and diversity of art have been common in Western thought. Albright thinks that the question is unanswerable since…
My friend Rich Bledsoe in response to a recent post on sexual ethics: “it has been pointed out in relation to JD Unwin’s work, that the great, revolutionary destructions of traditional sexual morality (in Russia when marriage was virtually banned as bourgeois, and every form of deviance encouraged, and later…
Brad Gregory ( Unintended Reformation , 268-9) observes that “like radical Protestants, the magisterial reformers, including Calvin, unambiguously condemned avarice, acquisitive individualism, and any separation of economic behavior from biblical morality or the common good.” The Reformers rejected voluntary poverty, but “their attitudes about the proper human relationship to material…
Wisdom from Yves Congar, as compiled by Brother Emile of Taize in his Faithful to the Future (43): “The problems of the fifth century and the resources of Augustine are not those of the third century and Hippolytus; the problems of the thirteenth century and the resources of Thomas Aquinas…
Revelation 12 opens with a tableau of a laboring cosmic mother threatened by a devouring dragon. During the course of the chapter, the dragon’s prey is snatched from his teeth (v. 5) and the dragon is driven from the sky (vv. 7-12). But as soon as the dragon gets to…
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