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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Here is a brief explanation of baptism I used in a service this morning: As we saw this morning, Jesus’ baptism and reception of the Spirit was immediately followed by combat in the wilderness with the devil. The church fathers saw that this was one of the meanings of Christian…
The exhortation for August 31, 2003. The essence of original sin, and of every sin, is to trust Satan’s word above God’s word. Satan’s word comes to us in many forms, but in essence every word of Satan is a slander against God. We succomb to temptation when we begin…
In Luke 4, Jesus responds to the wonder and marveling of the crowd by saying that “no prophet is welcome in his home town” (v. 24). The comments, like the comments in v 23, seem to come out of left field. Why does Jesus say this? What’s he up to?…
Adam (son of Saul) Bellow has written a book in praise of nepotism. Well, du-uh.
Dale C. Allison, Jr., The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993). Dale Allison, a research fellow at the Friends University in Wichita, Kansas, has written a superb case study in the New Testament’s use of the Old. Though he focuses on only a single typology (Christ as a…
Here is a very partial review/summary of a wonderfully stimulating book. I hope to go over it again sometime and add to this, but here it is in its unfinished form. Jeremy Begbie, Theology, Music and Time (Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). This is a…
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