Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Paradosis Center at John Brown University in Siloam Spring, Arkansas, put on its first conference last week, it was a remarkable event. It was an ecumenical conference including Orthodox (John Behr, Edith Humphrey, others), Catholic (Rusty Reno, Michael Root, others), and Evangelical (Timothy George, David Lyle Jeffrey). Unusually for…
Naphtali Meshel observes in his new The "Grammar" of Sacrifice that scholars have been talking for decades about the "grammatical" character of ritual and sacrifice in general, but have never actually analyzed a specific ritual or sacrificial system grammatically. Some even talk about a "universal grammar" of sacrifice "even though…
Some Christians are rather breezy about the problem of evil. We shouldn't be. Do I need to remind you of the grisly beheadings that have taken place over the past few weeks? Do I need to remind you of the blood of innocents that’s been spilled in our own country?…
Have you ever been to a wedding where the heavens opened and a voice declared the couple “husband and wife”? Few of us have. Beautiful as they are, most marriages are quite mundane. Yet when Jesus talks about marriage, He describes it as something that God does: “What God has…
Jesus is the last and greatest of the Prophets. He is the Prophet that Moses predicted (Deuteronomy 18). That means He gives the final word, brings the blueprints for the final temple, speaks the final world into existence, and has complete and permanent access to the divine court, where He…
Paul stands against those who are “troubling” or “disturbing” the Galatians churches ( tarasso ; 1:7; also in 5:10). The reference seems to be two great troublers from the Old Testament. First, Achan is described as a “troubler” for the problems he causes in the aftermath of the battle at…
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More conservative Christians have often charged that ecumenically-minded churches and theologians are indifferent to doctrine, aiming for a LCD theology. Ecumenical theologian James Wagner (in the 1963 collection The Challenge to Reunion ) argues that the precise opposite is true: “there is probably no group within the Christian fellowship throughout…
American church history is largely a story of division, wrote Robert Lee is a contribution to the 1963 collection, The Challenge of Reunion . In the early twentieth century, that began to change as American churches became “astir with a new spirit of unity and cooperation” (138). He lists 14…
In a chapter on “How to Be Theologically Funny,” Stanley Hauerwas ( The Work of Theology ) states his opinion that Barth was “‘naturally' funny,” but immediately adds that this doesn't really capture the deep role that humor plays in Barth: “his humor was also a reflection of the character…
Writing in 1961 ( Is Christ Divided? ), Lesslie Newbigin observed that while it is “common to say that we live in an age of revolutionary change,” it is uncommon “for Christians to welcome this fact.” Newbigin thinks that's a mistake: “we should welcome it—not merely because of the challenge…
John Peckham devotes a long chapter of his The Love of God to the question of divine emotions, the impassibility question. He emphasizes the need to “maintain the Creator/creature distinction, divine transcendence, ontological invulnerability, omnipotence, omniscience and the fact that God is not involuntarily vulnerable. . . . God is…
To listen to Trump, America is in trouble because we haven't been adequately looking after our own interests. To make America great means to put American interests first. Which raises a question: Is putting America first the way we became great in the first place? Might America's greatness instead have…
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