Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The resurrection stories in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are among the strangest stories in all of the literature of the world, even among the strangest stories in the Bible. That is true of each Gospel’s accounts individually, but even more of the collection as a whole. On the one…
As a pastor, I’m interested in discipleship. Christians are called to be disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ. Discipleship has everything to do with the disciplines we walk by in our lives. Things like Bible reading, prayer, and fasting are hallmarks of standard Christian discipleship. The basic thrust is that…
Psalm 1 is justly famous among biblical texts. It opens the Psalter, it’s a paean to the life-giving power of the Law, and it beautifully describes righteous life as a stable, fruitful tree. It subtly weaves the contrasting threads of wickedness and righteousness into a succinct summary of biblical wisdom:…
No book is more quoted in Hebrews than the Psalter: there are quotations and allusions to psalms on virtually every page. And many of the quotations are not passing references but closely considered and repeatedly cited as the author of Hebrews develops his central arguments. Much of Hebrews is exposition…
Howard Bloom is a beautiful hypocrite. The author of books in as different subjects as Mohammed, scientific theory, and the cultural upheaval of the 1960s, he professes to be a “stone cold atheist.” Yet in spite of that profession, Bloom obviously writes as a Jew; that is, he writes with…
There may be some debate about who deserves the title “the King of American literature,” but, at least to my mind, there should be no debate over who deserves to be “the Queen” – let’s give the crown to Flannery O’Connor. She is, however, a very unlikely queen. Unlikely, not…
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INTRODUCTION 1 Kings 1 moves from ?King David?E(first phrase of v 1) to ?King Solomon?E(vv 49-53). The first chapter is about the transition from one king to another, but the transition is difficult, rather than smooth. THE TEXT ?Now King David was old, advanced in years; and they put covers…
2 Kings 25:27-30 Kings, as we?ve seen, is not only a book about the unfaithfulness of Israel. It is a book about the faithfulness of God. In particular, it is a book about the faithfulness of God to the house of David, a faithfulness demonstrated over and over again in…
Roman Catholics and Protestants have both appealed to Kings to explore the significance of their divisions, and to defend their claims over against each other. For Roman Catholics, Rome is Jerusalem, maintaining the true worship of the temple while Protestants go after golden calves in places like Geneva and Wittenberg.…
Von Balthasar argues that Jesus is the archetypal child, who lives in constant dependence on His Father, who clings to “Abba,” who is constantly filled with thanks and awe toward His Father. And from that he develops a theology of childhood. Here’s one excerpt (taken from Stasiak’s book, mentioned above):…
One of the most stimulating works on infant baptism that I’ve found is Kurt Stasiak’s Return to Grace: A Theology for Infant Baptism . Stasiak is a Roman Catholic theologian who teaches liturgics at St Meinrad School of Theology. The first half of the book is a discussion of the…
INTRODUCTION No area of sacramental theology exposes assumptions concerning sacraments, and indeed concerning the Christian life, like the issue of infant baptism. Modern Christianity is plagued by an overly individualistic outlook, by the notion that religion is exclusively a matter of the heart, by a belief that religion is private,…
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