Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
And through the hands of the apostles many signs and wonders were done among the people. And they were all with one accord in Solomon's Porch. Yet none of the rest dared join them, but the people esteemed them highly. Acts 5:12-13 When Grandma needed healing, her children knew the…
Like certain kinds of music, the unchanging rhythm of Aquinas's Summa gets into your bones. Read a few sections and it begins to run through your head. You start drumming your fingers, humming, swaying gently to the rhythm of Videtur-Sed Contra-Responsio, Videtur-Sed Contra-Responsio, “It seems-On the contrary-I answer.” The only…
And Arpachshad lived thirty-five years, and became the father of Shelah . . . And Shelah lived thirty years, and became the father of Eber . . . and Eber lived thirty-four years and became the father of Peleg . . . and Peleg lived thirty years, and became the…
Of course, the title should be something like, “The Fall of the Angel Who Came to be Satan,” but that and other more accurate titles are too cumbersome. The question is: who is Satan, and when and how did he become “Satan” (Adversary, Accuser) and the “devil” (slanderer)? By my…
In The Oddness of the Feast of Booths , we saw that the Feast of Booths is a commemoration of the first encampment of Israel at Sukkoth (Booths) in Exodus 12:37, almost certainly the first celebration of the week of Unleavened Bread after the first Passover. The Feast of Booths…
This piece was originally published in 1989. 1. The Blessed Hope "Looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus." Titus 2:13 I was recently asked how I as a postmillennialist would preach on "The Blessed Hope." This is often…
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1 John 1:1-3 describes how those who never saw, heard, or handled the incarnate word of life can come to have fellowship with the Father through Jesus. First, the apostles (“we”) witnessed the Word in flesh directly. Second, they proclaim that testimony. Third, through believing their testimony, we come to…
John Kleinig suggests that Luke’s account of the Transfiguration alludes to the feast of booths: Luke “alone of the Gospel writers relates that the transfiguration occurred on the eighth day after Peter’s confession of faith (Lk 9:28). The transfiguration was the epiphany of Jesus as God’s Son. It showed Peter,…
Zygmunt Bauman, in the book mentioned above, traces the shifts in Western cultural imagination from the ancient hero through the Christian martyr, to the revival of the ancient heroic ideal in the early modern period, to our current cult of celebrity. According to Bauman, the modern hero was born “or…
An etymology of “conservative” from the online Dictionary of the History of Ideas (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/DicHist/dict.html): In Latin conservare means to protect, preserve, save; the noun of agency, conservator, appears as a synonym for the substantives custos, servator. Just as the Greek S?ter (“Savior”) was adopted from the religious realm by the…
Still on Bauman: “In most of its descriptions, modernity is presented as a time of secularization (‘everything sacred was profaned,’ as young Marx and Engels memorably put it) and disenchantment. What is less often mentioned, however, though it should be, is that modernity also deified and enchanted the ‘nation,’ the…
More on Bauman, since that last post was getting too long: Consumerism, we (especially Christians) tend to think, is driven by desire; if so, perhaps the solution is to limit or suppress desire. Bauman points out that the goal of consumer economies is to render desires irrelevant to consumption. Desires…
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