Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Meanings of Remembrance Both Luke’s account of the upper room (Luke 22:14–23) and Paul’s recounting in 1 Corinthians 11:23–25 record Jesus’ words that the Supper in the distribution of bread: “do this in remembrance of me” (τοῦτο ποιεῖτε εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν). 1 1 Corinthians 11:25 repeats the words in…
Genesis is a story of brotherly violence. Cain kills Abel. Jacob flees from Esau, his brother, to live with Laban, his mother’s brother, and ends up in a conflict with him too. Joseph’s brothers assault him, sell him away as a slave, and fake his death. All of this frames…
America is like a secular Holy Roman Empire. Contrary to dissidents who expect a collapse of the federal government, the implosion of the fiat dollar, or a national divorce into Jesusland and the United States of Canada, America will persist. Whether as a world hegemon or regional superpower, there is…
Many readers of the New Testament will, at some point or other, be troubled by the question of why Jesus’ earthly ministry did not address the Roman occupation. Perhaps as a child in Sunday school you were taught that the Jews were expecting a military deliverer, and that the form…
In a recent tweet , which he later expanded into a Substack post , Aaron Renn wrote about the importance of ‘picking the right ladders to climb’. One of our most critical life decisions, Renn argues, is that of choosing the right ‘status hierarchies’ to which we will commit ourselves;…
The Third Use of the Created Word “Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.” Those words are reflexive for almost any Anglican. Repeated nine times weekly at least during Lent and Advent if not year round, they are said between 54 and 468 times…
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A trolley careens out of control. If you push the fat man in front of the trolley, you can save the lives of five people, including two children, but the fat man will die. What do you do? The typical answers people give, oddly, depends on whether the question is…
I begin with two fundamental objections to R. Alan Streett’s Subversive Meals , a study of early Christian meal practices in the context of Greco-Roman banquets and the Roman empire. First, Streett takes the Roman banquet as the primary context for understanding Christian meal practices. I insist that Judaism and…
Jennings observes, as many have, that the New Testament says a great deal about God overcoming our enmity to Him ( Transforming Atonement , 127). He overstates his case, because the Bible, including the New Testament, also has much to say about the wrath of God. But his point stands,…
Reflecting on Paul’s Eucahristic teaching in 1 Corinthians 10-11, Theodore Jennings writes ( Transforming Atonement , 162): “To see the force of [Paul’s] argument, one need only ask in what ways the manner of assembling as communities of faith serves to demonstrate and exacerbate differences of wealth or prestige, of…
Scot McKnight ( A Community Called Atonement , 75-6) observes that the prophecy of Joel 2 that is fulfilled at Pentecost is a prophecy of political catastrophe. Pentecost, he concludes is both justification - “God’s act of justifying and making His judgment clear” by the gift of the Spirit that…
Scot McKnight ( A Community Called Atonement ) sums up the atonement as “identification for incorporation” (107). Jesus identifies with us even to death so that He may incorporate us “in his destruction of death and the devil,” and into the perichoretic fellowship of the Triune God. That formulation enables…
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