Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto Me. In 2005, God blessed our family with our third child, our second daughter, whom we named Bethany. As soon as Bethany was born, we knew there was something different about her. Unlike her two older siblings, who were born…
Christian, what is it that we believe? While Creeds like the Nicene and Apostle’s have been fundamental pieces of Christian liturgy and life, the American Church is highly unattached to these classic statements. From this creedal phobia has arisen the popular “No Creed, but Christ” slogan. Such slogan, of course,…
Revisiting William Cavanaugh’s devastating 2009 The Myth of Religious Violence . The myth of Cavanaugh’s title is a well-known one. According to the myth, religion is a distinct sphere of human life and practice from the rest of human social life, a universal impulse in human beings, and is dogmatic,…
19 Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. 20 And when he had so…
An octave is a repetition, a repetition with a difference. It’s not the first note played again , but the first note played at a higher pitch. Octaves have always marked new beginnings. Hebrew boys were circumcised on the eighth day. Firstborn sheep were dedicated to Yahweh on the eighth…
We say Jesus’ resurrection is good news. It wasn’t good news for the disciples on the first Easter. More like perplexing, bewildering news. For others, it wasn’t perplexing, and it certainly wasn’t good. It was plain old bad news. Early in Luke’s gospel, Herod is terrified that Jesus might be…
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In his study of Abelard’s soteriology, Logic of Divine Love , Richard Weingart the common claim that Abelard’s doctrine of the atonement is a “subjective” one. For starters, that opinion is based on a brief comment in Abelard’s Expositio in Epistolam ad Romanos that “is only an outline of Abailard’s…
Abelard insisted that human beings cannot be held guilty of acts that the did not commit. And there went original sin. But he also recognized that people suffer evils, and he tied this to the original sin of Adam and Eve. Without repentance, people are heading to eternal damnation. Infants…
Like some other recent writers on the atonement, Sharon Baker argues ( Executing God , 125), in a fashion similar to Thomas, that “the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross was acceptable to God not because of the external offering of Christ’s body with its dripping blood, but because…
Phillip Cary of Eastern College has argued, “Protestantism cannot carry through its own deepest intention – to put faith in the word of Christ alone – without a Catholic doctrine of sacramental efficacy.” I offer a brief defense of Cary’s counter-intuitive claim at The Evangelical Pulpit .
Distinguishing Catholic-infused from Protestant-imputed is difficult to sustain, since Luther frequently claims that justifying righteousness is “within” rather than “outside.” Luther’s 1520 treatise The Freedom of a Christian provides some rich material for this investigation. This is a very early treatise, and does not represent in every respect Luther’s mature…
The title of Benjamin Dunning’s Christ Without Adam summarizes one of the key themes of his book. He devotes chapters to Stanislas Breton, Alain Badiou, and Zizek, all of whom have written on Paul in recent years. In each case, though in different ways, they break the links that Paul…
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