Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
First John 5.16-17: If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life–to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for…
A few years back I read Lesslie Newbigin’s little book Truth and Authority in Modernity . 1 I was particularly impressed with his argument in chapter 2 “The Mediation of Divine Authority.” Now, maybe this is old hat to many of you, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard it…
Baptism is not Christian circumcision. There’s a lot of loose talk to that effect in Presbyterian circles; but it’s not accurate. The old world rite of circumcision was fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Baptism unites us to Christ and therefore makes us participate in the circumcision of…
In recent years I’ve observed a number of Reformed-type churches trying to institute corporate handraising in certain sung parts of worship. This often does not seem to work very well. Some people don’t do it. Some do it half-way. Some do it with one hand. Some dramatically stretch to the…
Most modern scholars recognize that behind Arius’s campaign to differentiate Jesus from God was the Hellenistic theological conviction that the high God cannot suffer. Rowan Williams argues that Arius had the right idea about divine suffering, but the wrong idea of God, which “puts the unavoidable question of what the…
Charismatics have been much maligned for constantly “praising the Lord.” They would say if you hit your finger with a hammer, you should instantly say, “Thank you Jesus that You let me hit my finger…” This of course, as we all know, is stupid. There was once a lady who…
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1 John 1:1-3 describes how those who never saw, heard, or handled the incarnate word of life can come to have fellowship with the Father through Jesus. First, the apostles (“we”) witnessed the Word in flesh directly. Second, they proclaim that testimony. Third, through believing their testimony, we come to…
John Kleinig suggests that Luke’s account of the Transfiguration alludes to the feast of booths: Luke “alone of the Gospel writers relates that the transfiguration occurred on the eighth day after Peter’s confession of faith (Lk 9:28). The transfiguration was the epiphany of Jesus as God’s Son. It showed Peter,…
Zygmunt Bauman, in the book mentioned above, traces the shifts in Western cultural imagination from the ancient hero through the Christian martyr, to the revival of the ancient heroic ideal in the early modern period, to our current cult of celebrity. According to Bauman, the modern hero was born “or…
An etymology of “conservative” from the online Dictionary of the History of Ideas (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/DicHist/dict.html): In Latin conservare means to protect, preserve, save; the noun of agency, conservator, appears as a synonym for the substantives custos, servator. Just as the Greek S?ter (“Savior”) was adopted from the religious realm by the…
Still on Bauman: “In most of its descriptions, modernity is presented as a time of secularization (‘everything sacred was profaned,’ as young Marx and Engels memorably put it) and disenchantment. What is less often mentioned, however, though it should be, is that modernity also deified and enchanted the ‘nation,’ the…
More on Bauman, since that last post was getting too long: Consumerism, we (especially Christians) tend to think, is driven by desire; if so, perhaps the solution is to limit or suppress desire. Bauman points out that the goal of consumer economies is to render desires irrelevant to consumption. Desires…
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