Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Every advent of new media creates the justifiable reaction from some that the necessarily accompanied amputation may not be worth the extension made possible by the new tools. This is not unique to the Digital Age. Lamoignon Malesherbes, the French politician who was counsel for the defense of Louis XVI,…
A response to Gage Crowder's " The Hole in our Hope ?" Already, the first pages of the Bible promise a bright future. The story starts with the creation of heaven and earth, where heaven is perfect, but the earth is in a state of formless emptiness. Yet, God takes…
A rejoinder to Bubu Jarmulak's essay, " Embrace Pessimism ." Whereas calumnious critiques are reflections of more on the critic than the work criticized, good critiques are always opportunities for reassessment and improvement if they are received as such . Since its renaissance, the biblical doctrine of postmillennialism—or “optimistic eschatology,”…
Several decades ago, a pastor (and friend) mentioned in passing at one of our regular breakfasts together that he wasn’t satisfied with the usual reading of Jesus’s prayer in Gethsemane, the usual reading being that Jesus asked the Father to avoid the Cross at Gethsemane. We turned to the passage,…
On May 21, 1604, the cathedral of Toledo in Spain held job interviews for the post of choirmaster, the head of music at the church. The position had been vacated when the previous occupant, Alonso Lobo, was poached by the nearby cathedral of Seville, and Toledo needed a replacement who…
Imagine — counterfactually: on the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus held up an empty hand and said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant poured out for you. Drink of it.’ But there was no cup, no wine, nothing. If there’s no sign of the covenant, is there…
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Considering the roots of contemporary "new nationalism," David Goldman contrasts the biblical roots of Anglo-American nationalism with the mythical roots of German nationalism. He suggests that Christianity faces a "conundrum," since, unlike Judaism, its spiritual and ethnic origins are not identical: Christianity "sees its spiritual origin at Golgotha but its…
John Frame is engaged in a battle over "classical theism" or "scholasticism" as articulated by James Dolezal (about whom I've written here ). Leave the terminology aside. Frame gets to the heart of the question, and gets it right: "The main content of Scripture is not that God is simple…
Isaiah reads like a “greatest hits” of Messianic prophecy. Isaiah prophesies the birth of the Messiah: "Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel" (Isaiah 7). "He prophesies the fact that the Messiah will…
Christian conceptions of prophecy are sometimes a mish-mash of ancient and modern conceptions. Plato thought prophecy a form of divine madness, somehow analogous to the madness of poetry and love. In the Phaedrus , Socrates says:"The divine madness was subdivided into four kinds, prophetic, initiatory, poetic, erotic, having four gods…
At the climax of John’s prologue he announces the beginning of the gospel: The Word became flesh. John has already told us a good bit about that word. The Word was “in the beginning.” John refers to the opening verse of the Bible, where we learn that the Creator is…
"The power of procreation and the power of conviction together confer on us, thanks to marriage, the combine strength of making epochs." So writes Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy ( In the Cross of Reality , 212). Marriage infuses new life into society, the possibility of peace. Without marriage, societies "cool down" into…
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