Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I grew up on the north side of Chicago. My parents were evangelicals and I was raised in the faith. I graduated from a large public high school in which practicing Christians were very few and very far between (though nominal Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox were in abundance), which…
During the recent round table discussion on the future of Protestantism , Peter Leithart advocated a much greater degree of unity in the Church than we presently enjoy. Another participant in the discussion wondered aloud how Leithart's vision would be different from the ministerial associations that presently exist in many…
"But he, wanting to justify himself, said, 'And who is my neighbor?' And Jesus said to him, 'First, your neighbors are the people in your church, then the ones with whom you enjoy greatest doctrinal or ecclesiastical commonality, then those with whom you enjoy less commonality.'" -Said Jesus... never Since…
A number of years ago, I came across something in the Puritan Thomas Goodwin in regard to John 17:22. Goodwin points out that Jesus prays that they (the disciples) might be given the glory of the Father as a means to an end. The end is unity, and the means…
In her prize-winning book, Gilead , Marilynne Robinson uses the pastoral settings of Iowa to challenge ministers to live up to their high callings. One of the most powerful themes in the novel is the pastor’s power to “bless.” The tension in the novel builds as we watch Rev. Ames…
One of the few glaring errors of the Protestant Reformers was the failure to welcome children back to the Lord's Table. Something that seems to go along with this was the exclusion of other kinds of Christians, primarily Roman Catholics, from Holy Communion in Protestant churches. Exclusion of Roman Catholics…
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Sermon outline for this coming Sunday: A House That Stands, Luke 6:12-49 INTRODUCTION The Pharisees sought to renew Israel by applying principles of holiness and separation in every detail of life, such as table manners and how you spent your time on the Sabbath. Jesus agreed that Torah had to…
Here’s the same problem elsewhere in Barth (again relying on Hunsinger’s treatment): This encounter with God, he argued, was mediated, not immediate, and was given by grace, not by nature. The encounter was objectively mediated by Jesus Christ, and given only by the free decision of God. The condition for…
George Hunsinger describes one of the implications of Barth’s “actualism” in this way: Negatively [actualism] means that we human beings have no ahistorical relationship to God, and that we also have no capacity in and of ourselves to enter into fellowship with God. An ahistorical relationship would be a denial…
Joel Garver of LaSalle provided me with the following quotation from Jorge Luis Borges, a quotation that Joel read in a series of lectures on postmodernism this summer: Borges refers to a ‘certain Chinese encylopaedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor,…
I work on the assumption that all the attributes of God are Trinitarian, relational attributes. How does this work with an attribute like “holiness,” which, by most definitions, describes God as wholly un-related? The key is to notice that the language of holiness in Scripture describes things and persons claimed…
Why does biology start with the cell and work upwards? Why explain biological phenomena in terms of cell activity, rather than cell activity in terms of the activity of larger systems? No doubt there is experimental evidence to support this approach, but I find it prima facie doubtful. In many…
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