Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto Me. In 2005, God blessed our family with our third child, our second daughter, whom we named Bethany. As soon as Bethany was born, we knew there was something different about her. Unlike her two older siblings, who were born…
Christian, what is it that we believe? While Creeds like the Nicene and Apostle’s have been fundamental pieces of Christian liturgy and life, the American Church is highly unattached to these classic statements. From this creedal phobia has arisen the popular “No Creed, but Christ” slogan. Such slogan, of course,…
Revisiting William Cavanaugh’s devastating 2009 The Myth of Religious Violence . The myth of Cavanaugh’s title is a well-known one. According to the myth, religion is a distinct sphere of human life and practice from the rest of human social life, a universal impulse in human beings, and is dogmatic,…
19 Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. 20 And when he had so…
An octave is a repetition, a repetition with a difference. It’s not the first note played again , but the first note played at a higher pitch. Octaves have always marked new beginnings. Hebrew boys were circumcised on the eighth day. Firstborn sheep were dedicated to Yahweh on the eighth…
We say Jesus’ resurrection is good news. It wasn’t good news for the disciples on the first Easter. More like perplexing, bewildering news. For others, it wasn’t perplexing, and it certainly wasn’t good. It was plain old bad news. Early in Luke’s gospel, Herod is terrified that Jesus might be…
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Ken Jackson's Shakespeare & Abraham is not, he says, “a traditional study of literary borrowing or influence that primarily seeks to link Genesis 22 and Shakespeare via philological evidence.” He does note verbal echoes and allusions (Shakespeare's use of the Abrahamic “Here I am” at critical moments in some plays),…
Nearly all our terms for immaterial concepts were originally terms for material objects. Words for “spirit” originally meant “breath” or “wind”; we use “conceive” to refer to a mental act, but it originally signified grasping with the hand (42). That has led, Owen Barfield wrote ( History, Guilt, and Habit…
Barth ( Church Dogmatics , 3.2, section 44) discusses gratitude under the heading of “man as a creature of God,” but creatureliness needs to be seen in a particular way. Man is summoned by the word of grace, by God’s address and affirmation of man. We are “called into life…
Luke 1 is Trinitarianly odd. Our creeds, growing out of Matthew 28:18-20 and other biblical texts, speak of the order of the Trinity as “Father, Son, Spirit.” That reflects the order of the economy: The Father does send the Son; and then the Son ascends to heaven, and sends the…
It's significant, writes Walter Kasper ( Handbook of Spiritual Ecumenism ), that “Jesus did not primarily express his desire for unity in a teaching or in a commandment to his disciples, but in a prayer to his Father. Unity is a gift from above, stemming from and growing toward loving…
Nation states have enormous power, which can be projected outwardly and exercised within. We can bomb targets on the other side of the world; the NSA can find out whom you call when for how long. It's also become clear that nation-states are also deeply vulnerable. The most sophisticated technologies…
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