Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In Colossians 4:7-9, Paul tells the Colossian church that he is sending Tychicus and Onesimus to them. It is clear that they are to deliver the letter Paul has written to the church and that they are also to report to the church the details of Paul’s ministry in chains…
On the 11 th of April, 1985, the communist dictator Enver Hoxha breathed his last. It was the beginning of the end of communist Albania. After 40 years of being isolated from almost the entire world, the Albanian people started to see what life really looked like outside their borders.…
Karl Ove Knausgaard once reminisced about an author he referred to as “the man with his sweater tucked into his trousers” who, upon entering the room, would declare as if it was his creed, “I write because I am dying.” Knausgaard acknowledges this to be one reason among many why…
The Missing “It Was Good” The patterns and repetitions of Genesis 1 are well known: God speaks, it happens, and God sees that it’s good; names are given, and there’s evening and there’s morning: a day. But the patterns of creation, like the patterns throughout Scripture, are marked by variation…
And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the…
The Bible is a book about trees. We start in Eden with two trees, we end in the New Jerusalem with a single double-trunked tree, and the story hinges around the tree they nailed our Lord to. Seeing the Forest We find trees singled out on day three of creation.…
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Treatments of Romans 7:7-25 are commonly massive exercises in missing the point. Readers pose questions that the text isn’t intended to answer, in particular: “Is the ‘I’ regenerate or unregenerate?” The passage isn’t about that. It’s about the law, and has two main aims: First, to vindicate Torah (vv. 7-13);…
Last week, I posted a critical response to David Bentley Hart's recent That All Shall Be Saved . Below, David responds. Well, Peter, let me give you credit for what you have not done. To this point, no reviewer who has written a negative piece on my book has actually…
There's a revealing moment in the "Second Meditation" of David Bentley Hart's That All Shall Be Saved . He opens the chapter with the comment that Christians must not make "any theological pronouncements in total abstraction from or contradiction of scripture" (92). He concedes "a certain presumptive authority" to the…
Romans 5-8 is arranged chiastically: A. 5:1-11: The justified have hope for glory in midst of tribulation B. 5:12-21: Adam and Christ: Adam's sin reversed C. 6:1-14: Death in baptism, deliverance from dominance of sin D. 6:15-23: Members as weapons of righteousness E. 7:1-6: Death to the law D'. 7:7-25:…
"What shall we say?" Paul asks at the beginning of Romans 6. "Shall we continue in sin that grace might increase?" This is typically taken as an "antinomian" objection. Paul emphasizes free grace. He's just said that grace abounds where sin abounds. He's heading off the false inference that we…
Ron Sider ( If Jesus Is Lord ) doesn't think the New Testament episodes about soldiers tell us anything much about the Christian ethics of war. He acknowledges that John doesn't tell the soldiers who come to him that they have to abandon their profession. BUt that doesn't matter, since…
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