Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Having spent time in a number of different kinds of churches/denominations over the years, it has been my observation that in every group there are those with a healthy catholic attitude toward other Christians and also those with a proud and condescending attitude toward others who call themselves Christians. If…
The BHrethren might be interested in this post I wrote on my personal blog which disagrees with John Gerstner’s understanding on the Church . Amid all the discussion of eschatology and hypercalvinism and how the visible church may properly be called the body of Christ, I completely overlooked how Gerstner’s…
How does one become a true judge? There are two trees in the Garden. One must first eat of the Tree of Life, which is purely a tree of grace, a gift. This is a tree that one has done nothing to deserve, and one must eat perhaps for a…
I just put up that first essay (#29 in a series) because I’d made some math goofs in the version mailed out, and I thought some other people would be interested. If this kind of study does not interest you, that’s fine. The Kingdom is a big place. Also, as…
. . . and the whole thing gets muddled. The words we traditionally use to translate Hebrew terms in the “sacrificial” system are confusing and often convey the wrong ideas. If we are going to understand Leviticus and the old world system of sacrifices and offerings, the first thing we…
I’ll start things off here. This year I’m preaching through the Gospel according to St. Luke. Over the past ten years I’ve preached through the Gospel according to St. Mark, St. John, and St. Matthew (in that order) in our morning services at Providence. It’s been eye-opening for me; and…
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Aseity is the property that describes a being’s self-causation. In theology, to speak of divine aseity is to say that God exists in and of Himself. He is not derived from or dependent upon anything else. He is fully Himself in Himself and of Himself. He is a se .…
Naomi Koltun-Fromm argues ( Hermeneutics of Holiness ) that the concepts of purity and holiness, while normally distinct in the Hebrew Bible, are blurred in some passages where qadash is used in contexts that speak of purity and purification rather than of consecration. In 1 Samuel 21:6, David says that…
Explaining Ezra’s concern about the mixed marriages in the restoration community, Naomi Koltun-Fromm ( Hermeneutics of Holiness ) writes, “Ezra presents Israel not only as holy but as a qodesh in its own right—a freestanding holy thing, a holy seed, a sanctum. As such, it must be protected (or in…
In his contribution to Seeing Things Their Way , Richard Muller discusses and commends the recent effort to free church history from denominational apologetics. When the Reformers are viewed in the light of late medieval theology (as in the work of Heiko Oberman), unexpected commonalities appear: “Common ground can be…
At the end of Albert Camus’s The Stranger , the narrator is on death row for killing an Arab. Death is familiar to him. It is the “black wind” that has blown through his entire life. For Camus’s Stranger, the inevitability of death makes life indifferent. It does not matter…
In his recent Zero to One , Peter Thiel sets out a neat typology of philosophy, politics, and cultural attitudes based on differing stances toward the future. He distinguishes optimists and pessimists, and subdivides each into “definite” and “indefinite.” Optimists and pessimists are obvious: One is bullish about the future,…
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