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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The “I” of Isaiah 50 - the Servant of Yahweh, or the prophet himself - expects to be justified (v. 8; verb is matzdiqi from tzadaq ). How will he be justified? He will be justified because Yahweh has given him a tongue to “hasten” the weary, to urge them…
It’s hard to discuss the social consequences of gay marriage because we don’t have much data to draw from. One way to pose the question in a more “testable” way is to generalize: What are the social consequences of defining sex as a bodily act between two individuals without any…
In the March 2013 print issue of First Things , Rabbi Gilles Bernheim, Chief Rabbi of France, examines what’s not being said when gay marriage advocates advocate for gay marriage. The notion, for instance, that “homosexuals are victims of discrimination” because they don’t have the right to marry whom they…
Another reflection on the debate between Douglas Wilson and Andrew Sullivan: The argument that homosexuality is “unnatural” is not going to get much steam going either. Sullivan waxed on and on about multi-sexed plants and sex-changing fish. Once one accepts Darwinian evolution, this sort of sexual variety becomes relevant to…
I came away from a debate on gay marriage between Douglas Wilson and Andrew Sullivan deeply impressed with the difficulties that Christians have, and will continue to have, defending a biblical view of marriage to the American public. It will take nothing short of a cultural revolution for biblical arguments…
Braudy ( The World in a Frame: What We See in Films, 25th Anniversary Edition ) uses the character of Rotwang from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to make the point that the best films are about the potentials of film. Rotwang is a mediating figure in Lang’s film, living above ground…
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