Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
It seems to be old news, but I was unaware of it until recently. Australian academics argued that mothers should be allowed to terminate the life of a newborn child. [i] Why would they promote such an idea? Because before the child is born it is not always possible to…
This is the second of two essays introducing Pascal’s Wager. Click HERE for Part 1. In “The Pop Star and the Mathematician” I gave an overview of the apologetic approach commonly called Pascal’s Wager. In that Wager, 17 th -century French mathematician Blaise Pascal argued that the choice between Christian…
This is the first of two essays aiming to introduce the reader to Pascal’s Wager. The second will address criticisms of the Wager. In the early 1990s, a perennially popular British pop star was interviewed on British television about his very public evangelical Christian faith. “What if,” the reporter asked…
Matthew 13 is about secrets. In this chapter, Jesus teaches eight parables and tells the disciples that they reveal the secrets of the kingdom (13:11). And much like Samson who both tells riddles and is himself a riddle that the reader must solve, so Jesus not only tells secrets but…
Click HERE for part One. THE TEXT AS TABERNACLE Creation – Initiation – Genesis (1 Samuel 17:1-11) The gathered armies not only remind the reader of Ebal and Gerizim, but also of the very reason that Israel was established (Creation) , set apart from the other nations by the circumcision…
What to do with Job’s Final “Friend,” Elihu Elihu is a strange character, at least in the sense of how and where he appears in the book of Job. Why does he not appear with the other three “friends?” Does his argument differ from any of the first three who…
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In a 1980 article in the Journal of the History of Ideas Margret de Grazia helpfully described what she calls the “secularization of language” that occurred during the 17th century. Her contribution is to show that the often-noted “linguistic pessimism” of the century arose from the destruction of “the traditional…
Lori Branch links the Reformation and post-Reformation attack on ritual with the formation of the Cartesian self: “the Reformation religious subject gradually became less a participant in communal, bodily ritual action, and more and more the Cartesian cogito , an individual, inward-looking possessor of knowledge drawn from evidence and analysis.…
1 John 4:8 says that the one who does not love does not know God because God is love. This might be legitimately read as: God is love; knowing God therefore necessarily involves knowing love; therefore, the one who does not know love does not know God. But that’s not…
The Son is sent to be savior of the world (1 John 4:14). And it’s only as the only-begotten Son that He can be Savior. This is true in the usual sense that Jesus is the “contact point” between God and man. But it’s also true in a more subtle…
John uses the phrase “only begotten” ( monogenes ) four times in his gospel (1:14, 18; 3:15, 18). (I’m assuming here the controversial point that the phrase does mean “only begotten.”) He uses it only once in his first epistle: God’s love is manifest in the fact that “God has…
Commentators sometimes suggest that 1 John 4:1-6 marks a rupture in John’s argument. 3:23 speaks of love as a commandment of God, but there is no mention of love in 4:1-6, which discusses testing the spirits and the warfare between the Spirit of God and the spirits of the world.…
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