Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8) O God the Father, creator of heaven and earth, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, who inspired Creation with the breath of your nostrils, who placed Adam in the…
For nearly a half-century, Sodom has been a key symbol in the American culture wars. On the one side, we have an aggressive movement among homosexuals that has first decriminalized homosexual conduct, then to force cultural and legal recognition of homosexuals as a minority and to normalize homosexual behaviors, finally…
Speaking of the Church, Romans 11:16-17 says, "And if the root be holy, the branches are also. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the root of the fatness of the…
At the end of Isaiah 61, Yahweh's Servant rejoices because the Lord clothes Him with salvation and righteousness. He decks Him like a bridegroom with a garland on His head. He wears jewels like a bride. He is a new bridegroom in a new garden of Eden, a garden of…
Before anything else, a word about “Torah” may be in order. I have been persuaded that “law” is a bad translation of “Torah,” even though it is evident that what is called “Torah” does have commandments, statutes, and ordinances in abundance. Why not “law?” “Law” as a translation for “Torah”…
Few novelists seem as innocent of the temptation to punditry as Jane Austen. Though living through a period that witnessed the birth of an independent United States, the French Revolution and the Terror, the Napoleonic wars and the rise of revolutionary romanticism, and the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, she…
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Odd thing: John’s gospel has more references to God’s will and choice and election than any other gospel. But in two cases, Jesus insists that He chose the disciples in the context of talking about Judas. John 6:70: “Did I Myself not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of…
Odd thing: John’s gospel has more references to God’s will and choice and election than any other gospel. But in two cases, Jesus insists that He chose the disciples in the context of talking about Judas. John 6:70: “Did I Myself not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of…
Sermon outline for September 28: Luke 8:1-56 INTRODUCTION Luke likes to organize his gospel into triads. In chapter 7, there were a series of triadic patterns: Jesus asks three times “What did you go into the wilderness to see?” (vv. 24-26), the sinful woman does threefold homage to Jesus (washing,…
From Derrida, still talking about the analogy of father-son and origin-speech: the father is not the generator or procreator in any “real” sense prior to or outside all relation to language. In what way, indeed, is the father/son relation distinguishable from a mere cause/effect or generator/engendered relation, if not by…
Back to thinking about Derrida, Hesiod, fathers, and sons. If the origin of speech is, as Derrida says, the “father” of the discourse, then the opposing myths of father-son (i.e., Hesiod and the gospel) are also opposing theories of signification and language. Derrida is of Hesiod’s tribe, who believes that…
James Smith of Calvin College has an important analysis of Catherine Pickstock’s attempt to conflate Christian incarnation and Platonic participation in his book, Speech and Theology (in the Radical Orthodoxy series). He admits that participation can affirm the material and bodily as instruments for the soul’s salvation, but questions whether…
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