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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In his recent book on the cultural history of honor, James Bowman notes that “both Greeks and Romans had a history of skepticism about honor that ran in parallel with the mainstream culture’s celebration of it. Plato anticipated a particular Christian tradition of other-worldliness by treating honor as a mere…
Michael Walzer (TNR, July 31) argues, “Selected infrastructural targets are easy enough to justify: bridges over which supplies are carried to the army in the field provide an obvious example. But power and water . . . are very much like food: they are necessary to the survival and everyday…
INTRODUCTION We should pray God’s promises back to Him. But God has not only issued promises; He has also issued threats. Faithful prayer asks God to be true to both. THE TEXT “Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. Let…
John 6:53-56: Jesus therefore said to them, Truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourself. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him…
Deuteronomy is a series of sermons by Moses on the law. Moses is not going to go over the Jordan to lead the people against the Canaanites, and so he spends his last days instructing Israel how they should carry out the conquest, assuring them that Yahweh will fight for…
Craig Gay ( The Way of the (Modern) World ) very lucidly traces a line of development from Descartes’ separation of the human subject from the world of objects, through the Cartesian and Newtonian effort to reduce science to mathematics, to the triumph of technical manipulation. At the end point,…
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