Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the first post of this series, I proposed that the sacraments of baptism and communion are the nexus point for the evangelical and ecumenical movements. In the following post , I proposed a new orientation for ecumenism – a conciliarity of the cross – with the necessary confession of…
“Contextualization” is now, and has been for a long time, the buzzword for the day. 1 Missionary effort in non-Western countries is all about “contextualization” — making our communication of the Gospel, if not the Gospel itself, fit into the culture to whom we from the West speak. 2 There…
In my previous post , I highlighted the sacraments as the point of convergence between evangelicalism and ecumenism arguing that baptism and communion are presented in the New Testament as signs of the gospel that simultaneously enact and remember union with Christ and the unity of Christ’s body. I concluded…
Click HERE for Part I of this series. What does baptism have to do with culture? As I said in the previous essay, the short answer is “everything!” To begin with, baptism is baptism into Jesus’ death (Romans 6:3). Paul explains this as the crucifixion of the “old man” (“old…
In the accounts of our Lord’s nativity and early childhood, so familiar to us from many years of Advent and Christmas services, we often fail to recognize in them the gentle intimations of a greater nativity that is yet to come. The attentive ear, however, can discover in these passages…
Isaiah warns that Yahweh is coming to remove Judah’s leaders in every area of social, economic and political life so completely that there will be no one left to lead besides children (3:4) and women (v. 12). As Isaiah goes on, however, it becomes clear that the women of Judah…
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In a 1953 speech delivered in New York marking the 20th anniversary of the Holodomor, the Ukrainian famine, Raphael Lemkin retold the chilling story of the Soviet Union's deliberate liquidation of Ukraine's churches, its “soul” and its “brain.” “Going along with this attack on the intelligentsia was an offensive against…
Psalm 45 begins as a song of praise by a court poet for a victorious king. Halfway through it turns into an epithalamion. As a complete poem, it a rollicking ol' romance. After the opening promise to compose a “made-thing” (Heb., ma'asah ) for the king, the poet celebrates the…
On the third day after Jesus’ death, women came to the tomb to dress the body and found the tomb empty, heard from angels that Jesus had risen from the dead, and shortly after encountered Jesus Himself. It really happened. If it really happened, then the power of tyrants is…
Holy Saturday is the mystery of God’s silence, and it is a great mystery. But the Son of God cannot claim Sheol as its Lord without turning death upside down. Death cannot hold Him. He is too big. Silence cannot muzzle the eternal Word, not forever. His descent is harrowing…
Jesus’ death does not contradict His sovereignty. It is a revelation of His sovereign Lordship. Jesus’ life and death reveals that God is Lord not only over all things He is Lord in all things. He is not only Lord over the safe confines of heaven, but Lord in the…
Anthony Pagden is worried about the rise of religion in the past several decades ( The Enlightenment: And Why It Still Matters ). He fears “the outcome might indeed be something close to the nightmare dreamed up by the contemporary American philosopher and psychologist Daniel Dennett: ‘The Enlightenment is long…
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