Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If 1 Chronicles were a movie, it would begin with two hours and forty-five minutes of credits: Name after name scrolling across the screen, most of them (as far as we’re concerned) obscurities and nonentities and unknowns, forgotten fathers and sons and mighty men; all the bit players in the…
Let me locate myself. I’m sitting on a sand dune, three hundred feet above the blue-as-a-swimmer-crab water of Lake Michigan. I’m so high above the surface that the sound of the waves flopping onto the beach is as quiet as wind easing through a screen door. Around me are several…
My title is too grand. What I offer here falls far short of a full description of poetry. I barely offer a definition. A more accurate title would be “Axioms and Suspicions About Poetry.” Axioms first. I have three of them. The first is the closest I can come to…
In his book In Defense of Food Michael Pollan does just what the title suggests, he defends food. Pollan argues that the presupposition behind modern food science, or “nutritionism” as he calls it, is that humans don’t need food, they need nutrients. To be sure, modern science is not yet…
The early church took possession of the Roman Empire within a few centuries, largely because she ministered sacrificially in word and deed. The church provided services and care that the empire and pagan religions could not in times of crisis. The faithful witness of those serving Christians bore great fruit…
My title, “The Original Murder” will be understood by many readers, if not almost all, to refer to Cain’s murder of Abel, but I have in mind the very first murder, the one which Jesus pointed to when He said that Satan was a murderer “from the beginning.” “You are…
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Here’s lectures notes on the first of my lectures on the Trinity at the upcoming Ministerial Conference in Moscow. The next two posts will be notes for my other two lectures. Lecture #1: The Dance of God, the Dance of Life: Perichoresis in Creator and Creature INTRODUCTION Since the patristic…
Silence is often seen as the summit of piety. Barth wisely says: Confronted with the mystery of God, the creature must be silent: not merely for the sake of being silent, but for the sake of hearing. Only to the extent that it attains silence, can it attain to hearing.…
A couple of quotations from Barth (both from Church Dogmatics , II.2, p. 5), not surprising or unusual in the post-Barth theological world, but well said: “We should still not have learned to say ‘God’ correctly (i.e., as understood in the Christian Church and on the basis of Holy Scripture)…
Well, Barth at least agrees that there is a nature/grace dualism implicit in the infralapsarian position. Strikingly, he points to the danger of anthropocentrism in supralapsarianism, arguing that by making the salvation of individual x and the damnation of individual y the primary purpose of the whole show, supras encouraged…
I’m poring over Barth and Berkhouwer on decrees and election, and seem to be making some progress. Try this: The doctrine of the decree is not merely that everything is predetermined. When the decree is formulated this way, it is hard to distinguish from determinism, and the decree has very…
Every tree That sheds autumnal glory In hope of spring Reveals The eternal life Of God
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