Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Not long ago, I heard these statistics about New York City: New York City is in $100 billion in debt. 20% of all NYC residents are on food stamps, which cost $250 million a month. 5% of NYC population are on disability, costing $252 million a month. Other assistance costs…
1. All political power is ambivalent. Vertical violence of “the state” tends to limit horizontal and contested power between people and between tribes. “The State” brings new oppression, but also a measure of new peace and unity. 2. All political formations are ambiguous like this: a strong family conquers weaker…
Gnosticism by any other name would smell the same. But does the church have much of a theological sense of smell, these days, when it comes to the seductions of virtuality in our worshipping communities? Social isolation during a global pandemic makes good public health sense, but whether church should…
It is a remarkable thing, you know, this thing called priority. Just a few weeks ago, religious leaders were boldly asserting in their high-dollar online videos that it was too dangerous to return to worship and that we needed to listen to our political and health leaders. "They are the…
Somewhere in the city of Jerusalem on a rooftop just a few years after the ascension of Jesus and the outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost. . . ". . . and just when are you guys going to live up to your ‘Sons of Thunder’ reputation? Huh? A lot…
In my book, Solomon Says: Directives for Young Men ( Amazon , Kindle ) I mention that Solomon portrays wisdom as a woman. But I don’t ask (or answer!) why he did so. Solomon uses the figure of Lady Wisdom without apology or explanation: Wisdom cries aloud in the street,…
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I n a 2009 piece in The Weekly Standard , Sam Schulman argues that gay marriage replicates “a very limited, very modern, and very culture-bound version of marriage. Gay advocates have chosen wisely in this. They are replicating what we might call the ‘romantic marriage,' a kind of marriage that…
It's not clear how much rethinking Gordon Wenham has done to produce his Rethinking Genesis 1-11 . After all, Wenham has been writing illuminating commentary about the early chapters of Genesis for a long time. Re-thought or not, his new little book contains some treasures. He observes the inversion of…
R onald Byars knows that mainline churches are in trouble, and in Finding Our Balance , he lays out a program for renewal. Much depends on restoring a positive notion of authority and a bounded orthodoxy, since “every community, including the ecumenical church, needs boundaries” (46). Doctrinal renewal is not…
Rowan Greer's One Path for All is a study of Gregory of Nyssa's writings on the Christian life. It includes a dozen selections from Gregory's works, and then a series of essays on the pathway of pilgrimage and battle that every baptized person must, along with all the baptized, walk.…
Lisa Deam's A World Transformed is an engaging, meditative study of what she calls the “spirituality of medieval maps.” Maps, she argues, are never neutral. They “show what their users want and need to believe about the world. They allow us to daydream, to plot and scheme, to envision our…
Our very existence is gift. That means that our very existence involves participation in the life of the giver. Paul Griffiths (Decreation, 200) puts it this way: “the fact that you are is sheer unmerited gift, and what you are is a participant in the LORD.” Sin is the rejection…
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