Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
This was a newspaper column that I wrote for the Minco Millennium back in January of 2000 when I had first moved to Minco, Oklahoma to pastor First Reformed Presbyterian Church. I wasn’t able to catch the recent performance of the musical, Godspell , in Oklahoma City. However, my dad…
Awhile back, there was a big debate among Evangelicals as to whether one had to trust Jesus “as Lord” as well as “as savior. Some claimed that one could be saved by Jesus through a faith that did not involve submission to him as Lord. Others claimed that one must…
I originally wrote this a few weeks ago in April 2002 as a column in the local newspaper, The Minco Millennium under the title “Faith & Follow-Through.” Several passages in the book of Hebrews are difficult for Protestants to swallow. The author affirms the once-and-for-all work of Christ and yet…
N. T. Wright’s commentary on Romans is destined to be a classic. The introduction alone is worth the hefty price of the book — but the exegesis itself is, well, priceless. I will not attempt a full review — these are just miscellaneous thoughts and random reflections — but I…
At an inn in the town of Lystra three men sat around a corner table. All three were well-known disciples of Joshua Messiah, members of what the town called a new cult, the Way. The short gray-haired man with the enormous beard was clearly restless. “This is taking too long,”…
Recently there has been some surprising debate in some circles over where Paul summarizes his Gospel. I say “surprising” because many Evangelical Bible scholars have held, for quite some time, that Paul’s Gospel is encapsulated in Romans chapter 1, verse 3 and 4. Here is the passage in context: Paul,…
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Bacevich notes the connection between premillennialism and support for Israel, and goes on to suggest that this leads in turn to support for American militarism: “as a result of the Religious Right’s fetish for the Jewish state, the distinctive Israeli strategic style - the way that Israelis conceive of military…
Amnesty International is complaining toda that “President Obama is reinstating the same deeply-flawed military commissions that in June 2008 he called an ‘enormous failure.’ In one swift move, Obama both backtracks on a major campaign promise to change the way the United States fights terrorism and undermines the nation’s core…
Andrew Bacevich notes in his The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War that 9/11 did little to shift American foreign policy: “The shattered events of September 2001 challenged the Bush administration to build . . . a new world order, and it turned instinctively to Wilson. Indeed,…
Where does tyranny come from? Levinas and Simone Weil argue that it grows out of the decay of neighborliness and hospitality, and Hannah Arendt claims that it comes when the creative solidarity of political friendship and spontaneous political action are suppressed. True; but all these fail to deal with what…
A few quick takes from Daniel Siedell’s excellent God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art (Cultural Exegesis) : After pointing out that Eastern Christians prefer the flatness of icons to the realistic perspective of Western art, Siedell concludes that this should “remind us that flatness [in Eastern…
Rose again, criticizing the postmodern assault on reason: “The decision by the intellectuals that reason itself has ruined modern life, and should be dethroned and banned in the name of its silenced others, is comparable to the decision to stop small children, girls and boys, from playing with guns, pugnacious…
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