Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
This was a newspaper column that I wrote for the Minco Millennium back in January of 2000 when I had first moved to Minco, Oklahoma to pastor First Reformed Presbyterian Church. I wasn’t able to catch the recent performance of the musical, Godspell , in Oklahoma City. However, my dad…
Awhile back, there was a big debate among Evangelicals as to whether one had to trust Jesus “as Lord” as well as “as savior. Some claimed that one could be saved by Jesus through a faith that did not involve submission to him as Lord. Others claimed that one must…
I originally wrote this a few weeks ago in April 2002 as a column in the local newspaper, The Minco Millennium under the title “Faith & Follow-Through.” Several passages in the book of Hebrews are difficult for Protestants to swallow. The author affirms the once-and-for-all work of Christ and yet…
N. T. Wright’s commentary on Romans is destined to be a classic. The introduction alone is worth the hefty price of the book — but the exegesis itself is, well, priceless. I will not attempt a full review — these are just miscellaneous thoughts and random reflections — but I…
At an inn in the town of Lystra three men sat around a corner table. All three were well-known disciples of Joshua Messiah, members of what the town called a new cult, the Way. The short gray-haired man with the enormous beard was clearly restless. “This is taking too long,”…
Recently there has been some surprising debate in some circles over where Paul summarizes his Gospel. I say “surprising” because many Evangelical Bible scholars have held, for quite some time, that Paul’s Gospel is encapsulated in Romans chapter 1, verse 3 and 4. Here is the passage in context: Paul,…
Showing page 228 of 309
Showing page 43 of 43
Scott Swain’s question in The God of the Gospel: Robert Jenson’s Trinitarian Theology is about “the relationship between God’s being and God’s self-determination between the Trinity and election, between God’s unfailing character and God’s unfolding covenant that reaches its climax in the gospel of Jesus Christ” (14). The question is…
OK, so it’s old, but Geoffrey O’Brien’s NYRB review of Malick’s The Tree Of Life is one of the best things I’ve come across. A few highlights. “An aroma of Freudian family romance pervades the film like a cloud of slightly acrid perfume, and Malick (who has written a screenplay…
Yes, answers Charles Taylor ( Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays , 50-1). But how? Taylor suggests there are three facets to mystery: (1) It refers to something we cannot explain; (2) it refers to something that we cannot explain that also is “something of great depth and moment”; and (3),…
Benedict XVI’s God’s Word: Scripture, Tradition, Office has some very good things to say, and some very questionable things. The good first. Christ, he emphasizes, is revelation, and the presence of revelation is the presence of Christ. Scripture presents this presence in two ways. First, the presence of Christ is…
Paul Barker’s review Carscapes: The Motor Car, Architecture, and Landscape in England in the TLS highlights the effect on the automobile on architecture and urban design. The authors “quote the historian Jack Simmons, in 1947, seeing his adoptive city, Leicester, stripped of its past in pursuit of engineers’, planners’ and…
Machen was not one to pussyfoot about theological differences. But he also recognized the chasm that lay between Catholoicism and Protestant liberalism ( Christianity and Liberalism ): “Far more serious still is the division between the Church of Rome and evangelical Protestantism in all its forms. Yet how great is…
Showing page 726 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
