Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The idea of atonement is not a distinctly Christian, or even Hebraic, concept. It also makes an appearance in ancient Greek thought (among other places). The Greek tradition is by no means monolithic, so it isn’t possible to speak of a “Greek” concept of atonement. But there are certain commonalities…
As we know, there are seven deadly or capital sins. Prior to the list of the seven deadly sins there was a list of eight evil thoughts or demons. It was made by an Eastern monk, Evagrius Ponticus. When the list was transposed to the West, one evil thought was…
Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is one of those epistles in Scripture to which pastors and teachers resort to show the church everything that it shouldn’t be . There is, of course, good reason for this. The Corinthian church was filled with all sorts of problems. Personality cults (i.e., factions),…
Today is Ash Wednesday , and as many Christians of the Protestant formerly "low church" persuasion are reacquiring some of the good and ancient practices of the church, one question in particular comes to the front: to ash or not to ash? That is, while many of us are finding…
A murder of tweets. To observe Lent rightly, we have to be persuaded that we already stand in God’s favor. Ash Wednesday reminds us to number our days. It helps us gain a heart of wisdom (Psalm 90:12). We keep Easter to manifest and deepen our prior share in resurrection.…
Dale C. Allison, Jr., The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993). Dale Allison 1993 book is a superb case study in the New Testament's use of the Old. Though he focuses on only a single typology (Christ as a new Moses) in only a single gospel (Matthew), Allison's…
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1 Timothy 4:13: Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed upon you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery. Prior to the Reformation, the Western church treated ordination as a sacrament. Protestants have never done that. For the seven sacraments of…
Many of you received an email this week encouraging you to be at church on time and rebuking those who are habitually tardy. Some got the impression that the elders don’t want you to show up at all if you’re running late. That’s not the point. If you’re unavoidably tardy…
In response to my earlier post on “Spouse and Kingdom,” Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio writes, “it strikes me that the WCF’s dualism in describing the Church reflects the typical Western dualism that was congealing during the 17th century. Invisible and spiritual matters can be described in poetic, imaginative,…
Zizioulas locates the central difference between patristic and postmodern views of “otherness” in the way each conceives the relation of old and new. For postmodernism, “alterity involves negation, rupture, ‘leaving behind’, for patristic thought the ‘new’ relates to the ‘old’ in a positive way.” He demonstrates this by appealing to…
In his 2006 volume, Communion and Otherness , John Zizioulas pretty directly connects Western philosophy with the fall of Adam. Adam claimed to be God and thus “rejected the Other as constitutive of his being.” As a result, Self took “ontological priority over the Other,” with the result that “otherness…
The extension of rights to the Jews was one of the great achievements of the French Revolution, and Rosenstock-Huessy moves from a discussion of the resulting Jewish enthusiasm for liberalism to a digression dealing with the relation of Jews and Gentiles in history. It is titled “Alpha and Omega,” and…
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