Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If utopia is a perfect place or at least the best possible social arrangement, it must be a very dull place where any change is a change for worse and not for better, where nothing can be new and good at the same time. There can be no conflict in…
Christians, even those who say much about ‘incarnational’ faith, can say surprisingly little about the way that God claims our bodies . Perhaps this is most striking in treatments of baptism, where the intensely bodily character of the rite would especially seem to invite comment. Even if the term ‘baptism’…
Dear Pastor, I believe the locus of the difference between us is your statement here: "There are mothers who choose to risk their lives and even die to preserve the fetus, there are those who wouldn't. There are the circumstances of the individual, family, income, community, illness, risk factors, etc..…
New Year’s resolutions for weight loss are practically on the liturgical calendar of America. Somewhere around the beginning of a new year, people resolve that they will get in better shape. Some are made to feel guilty by the obesity police in our country (whose standards are, many times, very…
Click HERE for Part 1 After sending my letter to the local pastors, I received a long and thoughtful post from one of the local pastors, and it was sent not just to me, but to all of the pastors whom I e-mailed. Unfortunately, I do not feel I can…
Narrative and story have been all the rage in theology for the last few decades. The attractions are obvious. Narrative theologians favor the active, unpredictable, vibrant God of Scripture to the impersonal first principle of philosophical theology. Narrative theologians reject the notion that theologians need to justify their work by…
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A central theme in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger is his critique of traditional conceptions of time. Aristotle is his bete noire . Aristotle defines time as a “number of motion,” which “inclines toward the quantitative, and so chronological sense of time as a sequence of ‘nows’” (D.C. Schindler, A…
Acts 8:1-4 records the beginning of Saul’s persecution of the Jerusalem church following the death of Stephen. It has a neat, nearly-chiastic structure: A. Saul in agreement with Stephen’s “taking off” (8:1a) B. A great persecution, scattering disciples (8:1b) C. Except the apostles (8:1c) B’. Devout men gather Stephen, with…
Anointing the sick, including the dying, is one of the traditional seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. The Reformers denied that the rite qualified as a sacrament. Formally, this was because anointing did not have a direct authorization from Jesus; more theologically, it was not one of the marks that…
The ordination rite for Aaron & sons is a ritual of taking and giving. At one level, that’s simply a basic linguistic fact. The verb “take” (Heb. laqach ) is used only five times in Leviticus 1-7, mostly with reference to taking blood to smear on the horns of the…
I first posted the following in August 2015, right at the start of Trump's primary campaign. Seven years on, it holds up - both as an analysis of why decent people enthuse over Trump and why they shouldn't. I've changed a grammatical infelicity or two and added an update in…
God is an event, writes Robert Jenson ( Systematic Theology, I , 221). “God is a person,” writes Robert Jenson, on the next page (222). How, Jenson asks, can He be both? Jenson’s rejoinder: How can He not be both? “What else could be a person?” A bit more elaborately:…
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