Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto Me. In 2005, God blessed our family with our third child, our second daughter, whom we named Bethany. As soon as Bethany was born, we knew there was something different about her. Unlike her two older siblings, who were born…
Christian, what is it that we believe? While Creeds like the Nicene and Apostle’s have been fundamental pieces of Christian liturgy and life, the American Church is highly unattached to these classic statements. From this creedal phobia has arisen the popular “No Creed, but Christ” slogan. Such slogan, of course,…
Revisiting William Cavanaugh’s devastating 2009 The Myth of Religious Violence . The myth of Cavanaugh’s title is a well-known one. According to the myth, religion is a distinct sphere of human life and practice from the rest of human social life, a universal impulse in human beings, and is dogmatic,…
19 Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. 20 And when he had so…
An octave is a repetition, a repetition with a difference. It’s not the first note played again , but the first note played at a higher pitch. Octaves have always marked new beginnings. Hebrew boys were circumcised on the eighth day. Firstborn sheep were dedicated to Yahweh on the eighth…
We say Jesus’ resurrection is good news. It wasn’t good news for the disciples on the first Easter. More like perplexing, bewildering news. For others, it wasn’t perplexing, and it certainly wasn’t good. It was plain old bad news. Early in Luke’s gospel, Herod is terrified that Jesus might be…
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The word “Gethsemane” means “wine-press of oil.” It’s built from the same Hebrew root as Gath-Hepher, “the wine-press of the well,” a city in the tribal area of Zebulun, the birthplace of Jonah, and Gath-Rimmon, the “wine-press of the pomegranate,” a town in Dan. One of the five cities of…
God is, Barth repeatedly insists, as He reveals Himself. But Barth also hesitates about reading the relations expressed in the economic Trinity into the ontological Trinity ( Church Dogmatics , I.1, ch. 10). The relations as revealed are comprehensible, but these relations as revealed, precisely insofar as they are comprehensible,…
When Ewa Thompson joined the Indiana University faculty in 1968 as an assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Comparative Literature, Vietnam War protests were at their peak. A native of Poland, Thompson could not understand why Americans didn't unite against the Communists in Vietnam. Her first-hand experience with Communism, and…
David Goldman reports that “From 1977 t0 2005, business startups accounted for almost all economic growth and all net job creation. Established firms shrank and new firms grew. After the Great Recession of 2008, the opposite occurred: established firms accounted for all the recovery in employment, and startups contributed nothing…
The Mount of Olives is mentioned by name only twice in the Old Testament, and once it is alluded to as the “mountain east of Jerusalem.” When David abandons Jerusalem during the rebellion of Absalom, he travels east to the Mount of Olives, and then into the wilderness (2 Samuel…
According to Barth, when the decree loses its Christological focus, a gap emerges between a fundamental decree regarding predestination and reprobation and the “functional” decree to save in Christ. Christ becomes an instrument for carrying out that more basic decree, but He is not identified with the content of that…
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