Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Having spent time in a number of different kinds of churches/denominations over the years, it has been my observation that in every group there are those with a healthy catholic attitude toward other Christians and also those with a proud and condescending attitude toward others who call themselves Christians. If…
The BHrethren might be interested in this post I wrote on my personal blog which disagrees with John Gerstner’s understanding on the Church . Amid all the discussion of eschatology and hypercalvinism and how the visible church may properly be called the body of Christ, I completely overlooked how Gerstner’s…
How does one become a true judge? There are two trees in the Garden. One must first eat of the Tree of Life, which is purely a tree of grace, a gift. This is a tree that one has done nothing to deserve, and one must eat perhaps for a…
I just put up that first essay (#29 in a series) because I’d made some math goofs in the version mailed out, and I thought some other people would be interested. If this kind of study does not interest you, that’s fine. The Kingdom is a big place. Also, as…
. . . and the whole thing gets muddled. The words we traditionally use to translate Hebrew terms in the “sacrificial” system are confusing and often convey the wrong ideas. If we are going to understand Leviticus and the old world system of sacrifices and offerings, the first thing we…
I’ll start things off here. This year I’m preaching through the Gospel according to St. Luke. Over the past ten years I’ve preached through the Gospel according to St. Mark, St. John, and St. Matthew (in that order) in our morning services at Providence. It’s been eye-opening for me; and…
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The Economist's review of Thomas Lacqueur's The Work of the Dead highlights the shifts in our funeral customs over the past few centuries: “A large part of the book is devoted to the slow transition from churchyards to cemeteries, a story of changing sensibilities, epitomised by the gradual replacement of…
In his forthcoming collection of essays, The Ways of the World , David Harvey observes that “it is impossible on the ground and in the streets to see where nature ends and culture begins. imposing a dichotomy where there is none is a fatal mistake.” Geography is his great illustration…
Most readers and viewers of Hamlet take Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy as a meditation on suicide. In Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency , John E. Curran, Associate Professor of English at Marquette University, argues there are bigger things at work. Hamlet is opposing two ontologies, religious universes, moralities.…
Rhetoric is an ancient art. It was one of the main courses of study in ancient schools, along with grammar and logic. During the days of the Roman Empire, learning rhetoric was a path to power and prestige. Augustine, the great church father of North Africa, was trained as a…
The story of Jerusalem's deliverance from Sennacherib's Assyrian army, told in both 2 Kings and Isaiah, is an exciting account. It's a story worthy of Byron’s galloping verse, his medieval ballad. But still: So what? What does all this ancient history have to do with me, with my problems, with…
Why do we talk about patriotism in religious terms? asks Ivan Strenski (in a Library of Social Science essay): “For a student of religion what strikes one as odd is that we name the act of giving up one’s life for the sake of one’s nation, as a ‘sacrifice.' Why…
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