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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Philip Terzian isn't much disturbed by the tumult in the Republican Party. He concedes that the Party is going through some changes, whose outcome remains to be seen: "The coalition that propelled Donald Trump into the White House may be a harbinger of the party’s future, or it might have…
In his Death, Burial, and Rebirth in the Religions of Antiquity , Jon Davies attends to the communal significance of the deaths of biblical patriarchs. He writes, "Jacob is gathered ‘unto his people,' not explicitly unto his God. On the orders of his son Joseph, Jacob was embalmed (a rare…
Julie Bindel's study of The Pimping of Prostitution takes a sustained, unrelenting look behind the veil of what's euphemistically called "sex work." According to the TLS reviewer , Bindel's study is based on "interviews with fifty current or former sex workers in thirty-five countries, from New Zealand to rural India,…
"We encounter reality only if we approach it on all the paths which we, as creatures, can tread," writes Rosenstock-Huessy ( In the Cross of Reality , 230). He's commending his quadrilateral cross of reality, arguing that we must pursue the fourfold path of "the soul, of reason, culture, and…
CP Snow's famously complained about the divergence between "two cultures" of humanism and science. Among Romantic poets, the humanist resistance to science is best exemplified by Blake. As Algis Valiunas observes , Blake's "unflattering" painting of Newton depicts him as "a consummate specimen of a particular human type, and it…
"Once upon a time," writes Anthony Madrid , "there were two traditions in Anglophone poetry. On the one hand, there was poetry that was completely easy to understand and whose elegance depended on translucent phrases and straightforward sentiments. On the other hand, there was the hard stuff: poetry where the…
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