Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
When a certain Samaritan village refused Jesus’ attempt to visit, James and John asked Jesus if they should call down fire from heaven upon it. The allusion to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is evident, but, as the story shows, James’ and John’s thinking was entirely warped. Jesus rebuked…
In the first part of this essay, I considered paideia (formation)and mimesis (imitation) in the context of Aristotle’s virtue ethics and that of the New Testament. The overall concern is to realize how relevant is Aristotle’s ethics both to diagnosing our current malaise and to enculturing our children, though we…
In these posts I am inviting you into my philosophical reflection about integration , the absence of which we feel palpably in our fragmented world. My hope is for us to understand it more deeply, and to be ourselves reintegrated in the process. At this point in this extended inquiry…
It’s hard to imagine someone, centuries from now, mistaking our culture for a moral highpoint in the history of the West. Increasingly the news is dominated by school shootings, abusive policing, sexploitation of women, and increasing rates of suicide, addiction, and divorce. In response, the Left calls for regulations, surveillance,…
“The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit.” (Ps. 34:17-18) God is listening. He is listening when we ask Him for financial provision,…
The allusions to Mt. Sinai in the transfiguration story point to Jesus as a new Moses and even more as Yahweh, the God who met Moses and Elijah on the mountain. The fact that Jesus, Moses, and Elijah spoke of Jesus’ “exodus” suggests that the mountain of transfiguration was intended…
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“In most of our scholarly literature about the classical world,” writes Columbia University’s William V. Harris in his Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity , “political and religious change . . . seems to take place in a remarkably calm fashion.” Harris doubts that this is…
So, What Are We Anyway? INTRODUCTION The liturgical changes recently introduced at Trinity might well provoke an identity crisis for members of the church. Have we become Lutherans? Or Anglicans? Or have we abandoned the Reformation altogether? Are we still Protestants? Are we on the road to Rome, Canterbury, Constantinople?…
1 Corinthians 11: the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it. Division and reunion, death and resurrection, is the basic pattern of human life. Marriage is, as Pastor Wilson has taught us, woven into the fabric…
As Pastor Wilson will explain more fully in the sermon this morning, division is an essential part of creation. God creates by dividing light and darkness, by separating waters above and waters below, by drawing a boundary between sea and land. This creative division continues throughout Scripture, as God recreates…
Matthew 18:1-6 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, ?Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven??EAnd He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not…
The following is a Christmas Eve homily, largely paraphrased/quoted from Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics , 4.1, pp. 185ff. John 5:30: ?I can do nothing on My own initiative As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of…
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