Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
My first title for this series of posts was “Evangelical Sacramental Ecumenism” – not exactly a clickbait title. But those three words, evangelical, sacramental, and ecumenical, say a lot: The centrality of the gospel; a focus on baptism, bread, and wine; and the quest for visible unity among diverse churches.…
I can imagine someone reading the title of this essay and saying to himself, "I have two questions. First, what in the world is “contextualization”?" Second, even before hearing the answer to the first question, he may wonder, "what does baptism have to do with such an awkward and vague…
Deuteronomy 21:18-21 My colleague Ralph Smith has recently written on this passage, here . I entirely agree with Ralph's thrust, which is typological, that the passage is ultimately aimed at the entire nation of Israel itself as the rebellious son. But what I am thinking is from another perspective, perhaps…
In the previous article in this series, I drew attention to the threefold meaning of the Spirit of God descending as a dove on Jesus at His baptism. On a related note, I also argued that 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and Titus 3:3-7 were parallel passages that addressed the same issues…
The National Anthem protest is misguided. So too the conservative backlash. The Church’s response has been disappointing. I address each in turn. The greatest triumph of the American Civil Rights Movement was its seizing of the moral high ground in American politics. It did so by insisting only on those…
Peter Leithart’s book, The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism , argues that baptism is parallel to and the fulfillment of the old covenant rite of priestly ordination. But this is not something explicitly stated in the New Testament. Why, then, should we believe it? Leithart shows in…
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“Scholars today (though in practice it is more the custom of the popularizers and media exponents) can afford to be snide or patronizing about the missionary movement,” writes Andrew Walls in The Cross-Cultural Process of Christian History . “But many branches of Western learning now exist because of it.” He…
After several chapters of polemic against nomos , Paul finally has a kind word for law, commending the “law of Christ” in Galatians 6:2. Some have suggested that the phrase refers to a set of teachings of Jesus, the sermon on the Mount perhaps as a kind of Christianized Torah.…
Scott Sunquist ( Understanding Christian Mission , 127-8) asks why African Christianity so often developed into independent churches rather than as mission plants from Western churches. He enumerates a number of causes, all of them revealing. One, unsurprisingly, was the “authoritarianism” of Western missionaries: “There were many well-educated and strong…
In a brief review of recent Asian Church history ( From Every Tribe and Nation ), Mark Noll makes the arresting comment that “Mao Zedong counts as one of the most significant figures in modern church history.” Noll hastens to add this was not Mao's intention; rather, it is “because…
I n an essay on “Christianity in the Non-Western World” found in The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History , Andrew Walls observes that “With relatively few (though admittedly important) exceptions, the areas and peoples that accepted Islam have remained Islamic ever since: Arabia seems now so immutably Islamic that it…
At the end of Galatians (6:11-16), Paul picks up on themes from the first part of the letter. In the opening greeting, Paul summarized his gospel as the Son’s self-giving to deliver us from the present evil age. At the end, he says that his participation in the cross means…
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