Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
From time to time, when I’ve lectured on how to read the Bible, I’ve used art-music as one example thereof. When we listen to a simple folk song, we hear the same melody over and over again, but this is not how composers write "high" music. Let me amplify. A…
Sermons are rarely more tiresome than when they strive for relevance. Drawing from the latest headlines transforms the preacher into a one-man MacLaughlin Group, a Crossfire without the cross though perhaps with some of the fire, and leave the congregation thinking, "If I wanted Meet the Press, I could have…
Part One: The Old Testament “Drink is in itself a good creature of God, and to be received with thankfulness, but the abuse of drink is from Satan, the wine is from God, but the drunkard is from the Devil” Increase Mather in Wo to Drunkards (1673). 1. The “wine”…
28. These are the people whom Nebuchadnezzar carried away into exile: in the 7th year 3023 Jews. 29. In the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar 832 persons from Jerusalem. 30. In the 23rd year of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile 745 Jewish people; there were 4600…
Revelation 21:24 says, concerning the light shining from the New Jerusalem, "and the nations will walk by her light, and the kings of the land will bring their glory into her." Similarly, Revelation 22:2 says, concerning the Tree of Life, that "the leaves of the tree were for the healing…
Jeremiah and the Beginning of Jehoiakim’s Reign Now comes Jeremiah, at the beginning of Jehoiakim’s reign, with similar words (Jeremiah 26). Harken to God’s law, he said, or else God will destroy the Temple the same way He sent the Philistines to tear down the Tabernacle at Shiloh (Jeremiah 26:6;…
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Eucharist has always been the center of the worship of the people of God. Abel worshiped Yahweh at an altar, which is to say, a table, and so did Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and all Israel . That continued into the new covenant, where the Lord’s Supper instituted by Jesus…
Jesus says the Father seeks worshipers who worship in Spirit and in truth. We know that “spiritual worship” doesn’t mean immaterial, non-bodily worship. It couldn’t: Even if we sit as quietly as Quakers, we need our bodies to fill the chair. But what does it mean to worship in Spirit?…
Charles Krauthammer has a sharp analysis of the AIG bonus fiasco: “in the scheme of things, $165 million is a rounding error. It amounts to less than 1/18,500 of the $3.1 trillion federal budget. It’s less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the bailout money given to AIG alone. If…
Schmemann again (from an appendix to For the Life of the World ): “To condemn a heresy is relatively easy. What is much more difficult is to detect the question it implies, and to give this question an adequate answer. Such, however, was always the Church’s dealing with ‘heresies’ -…
Schmemann anticipates Milbank: “Secularism - we must again and again stresss this - is a ‘stepchild’ of Christianity, as are, in the last analysis, all secular ideologies which today dominate the world - not, as it is claimed by the Western apostles of a Christian acceptance of secularism, a legitimate…
David VanDrunen of Westminster West offered an interesting Christological defense of iconoclasm in an article several years ago published in the International Journal of Systematic Theology . Christology, he argues, does not support the conclusion that we may make pictures of Jesus, but the opposite. Because Jesus is still the…
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