Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Paradosis Center at John Brown University in Siloam Spring, Arkansas, put on its first conference last week, it was a remarkable event. It was an ecumenical conference including Orthodox (John Behr, Edith Humphrey, others), Catholic (Rusty Reno, Michael Root, others), and Evangelical (Timothy George, David Lyle Jeffrey). Unusually for…
Naphtali Meshel observes in his new The "Grammar" of Sacrifice that scholars have been talking for decades about the "grammatical" character of ritual and sacrifice in general, but have never actually analyzed a specific ritual or sacrificial system grammatically. Some even talk about a "universal grammar" of sacrifice "even though…
Some Christians are rather breezy about the problem of evil. We shouldn't be. Do I need to remind you of the grisly beheadings that have taken place over the past few weeks? Do I need to remind you of the blood of innocents that’s been spilled in our own country?…
Have you ever been to a wedding where the heavens opened and a voice declared the couple “husband and wife”? Few of us have. Beautiful as they are, most marriages are quite mundane. Yet when Jesus talks about marriage, He describes it as something that God does: “What God has…
Jesus is the last and greatest of the Prophets. He is the Prophet that Moses predicted (Deuteronomy 18). That means He gives the final word, brings the blueprints for the final temple, speaks the final world into existence, and has complete and permanent access to the divine court, where He…
Paul stands against those who are “troubling” or “disturbing” the Galatians churches ( tarasso ; 1:7; also in 5:10). The reference seems to be two great troublers from the Old Testament. First, Achan is described as a “troubler” for the problems he causes in the aftermath of the battle at…
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Evangelicalism, writes Andrew Wall, is a “protest movement,” one of many illustrious such movements in the history of Christianity, beginning with St. Anthony's retreat into the desert. As protest, “Evangelical faith is about inward religion as distinct from formal, real Christianity as distinct from nominal. In other words, the evangelicalism…
“The danger inherent in all the (necessary) work of theological statement is that it may go beyond the task of protecting the gospel and become a series of additions to the gospel,” writes Lesslie Newbigin ( The Reunion of the Church , 16). Denominations add to this inherent danger because…
In a critical assessment of the ecumenical movement published in 1957, evangelical J. Marcellus Kik assessed the reasons given for pursuing unity in the church. One, he says, is that “the world situation presents a powerful incentive to act with Christian unity,” because, it is argued, “what the many denominations…
Over at The Federalist , Joy Pullmann summarizes the case in favor of expanding opportunities for midwives to offer their unique style of woman-oriented health care: “First, it’s low-cost. Second, it creates more flexible health-care arrangements for both providers and clients that greatly increase satisfaction and positive health outcomes. Third,…
Writing in 1961 ( Is Christ Divided? ), Lesslie Newbigin reflects on the use of the phrase “foreign missions.” He understands why some Christians don't like the phrase: “It has overtones of the nineteenth century, of paternalism and colonialism.” And he is well aware that the terrain of the Christian…
Each Israelite is commanded to fix a tassel at each of the four corners of his or her garments (Numbers 15:37-41). Within each tassel is a cord of blue. As Jacob Milgrom and others have argued, that cord is wool, which means that each Israelite wears slightly mixed clothing, which…
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