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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Paul's sermons in Acts 13 and 17 both employ language connected with the theme of justification that occupies so much attention in Romans and Galatians. Yet Paul uses the same concepts and terminology in ways that don't seem to fit his usage in the epistles. In Acts 13:38-39, he tells…
In her book on Common Prayer , Ramie Targoff claims that “What emerges in the aftermath of the Reformation is less a triumphant embrace of the individual's private and individual self than a concerted effort to shape the otherwise uncontrollable and unreliable internal sphere through common acts of devotion” (6).…
The genealogy of Levi is at the center of the genealogical section of 1 Chronicles. The genealogy begins with Adam and reaches ahead to the restoration from exile. In short, the genealogies survey all of human history, and, with the Levites at the center, it's as if the human race…
Early on in David Downs's study of Alms and atonement in early Christianity, he offers this striking quotation from Basil. He urges his hearers to keep the commandment to feed the hungry “as you would take hold of a fugitive, securing it from all sides with grasping hands and encircling…
Theological investigations of Naziism are often dogged by “a subtle methodological difficulty,” writes Paul Hinlicky in Before Auschwitz (2): “the ‘retrospective fallacy,' sometimes also called ‘presentism.'” As Hinlicky explains, “Unlike the historical actors in church and society during the 1920s and 1930s in Germany, our inquiry benefits from certain knowledge…
Paul's criticism of idols in his Athens speech repeats philosophical commonplaces about the nature of God and the difference between God and images, commonplaces as old as Plato and as contemporary as Seneca. But they were philosophical commonplaces. Lane Fox has pointed out that the philosophical skepticism about images was…
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