Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I've pastored a very rural church for well over a decade. Our town has about 1,000 people and will never grow until Jesus returns. 38 people attend our worship on Sundays. Here's a quick list of what we’ve done to grow our church, and what I’ve done to survive pastorally.…
Thanks for sharing so honestly about your current crisis of creativity. I totally understand and relate to that; it’s happened many times in my musical life thus far, and I’ve begun to accept it as a normal rhythm of the creative process. I actually went through a serious dry spell…
The Broken Stones of Israel At Sinai, the tablets of the Law of Moses were broken and restored. The Old Testament is a history of “new covenants,” including that promised in Jeremiah and fulfilled in Zechariah. Ultimately, the vertical Oath and the horizontal Sanctions met in the death of Jesus…
Woe to the sinful nation. Woe to those who enlarge their estates and build their portfolios. Woe to the drunks. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil. Woe to the proud who are wise in their own eyes. Woe to Congressmen who pass unjust laws and to…
The interpretation of Romans 7:7-25 is notoriously difficult. Good scholars disagree on many aspects of the passage, but the central interpretative difficulty concerns the identity of the “I.” Is Paul referring to himself? Is Paul referring to himself pre- or post-conversion? Does the “I” refer to Adam? Is the “I”…
You board the Metra train at Arlington Heights station one afternoon, heading to downtown Chicago for some sight-seeing. As the train departs from the station, a man in jeans, a striped t-shirt, and a Kansas City Royals baseball cap enters your train car, and begins asking to see each passenger’s…
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E sther Meek ( Longing to Know ) uses Magic Eye 3-D pictures to probe what it means to know. Following the instructions, you hold the picture to your face until you can see the picture past/through the surface details. For Meek, the process of seeing the dolphins in the…
T he Chronicler is a generous judge of Judah's kings. King Joash “did what was right” (2 Chronicles 24:2), even though he murders Zechariah the prophet, son of Joash's savior, Jehoiada (24:20–21). Amaziah “did right” (25:2), even though he worshiped Edomite gods for a time (25:14–15). Uzziah “did right” (26:4),…
H erbert Schlossberg recounts efforts at school and university reform following the religious revivals of the late 18th and early 19th centuries ( The Silence Revolution & the Making of Victorian England ). One of the factors that stymied reform was religious disunity. Tractarians resisted any educational system that didn't…
R ichard Oastler, advocate of the Ten Hours Bill to limit the work week, was a decided Tory, not because he wanted to preserve class privilege but because he believed that conservative policies benefitted the most vulnerable: A Tory is one who, believing that the institutions of this country are…
R .W. Dale was the most prominent orthodox Congregationalist pastor in late Victorian England. As Herb Schlossberg puts it, he “was dismayed by the decline of the old theology in favor of an easy-going God, who was not to be feared. He thought rather that fear was a legitimate part…
O rthodox theologian Pantelis Kalaitzidis ( Orthodoxy & Political Theology ) follows Erik Peterson's analysis in Monotheism as a Political Problem . Peterson critiques the “political Arianism” in patristic imperial apologists like Eusebius, a position that treats the emperor as an emanation from God, like the not-eternal Son. Peterson “suggests…
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