Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Bible depicts Man’s transformation from beas t to priest in and through Jesus Christ. Two sets of people have their garments designed by God in the Torah: Adam and Eve and priests (of which the High Priest’s garments garner most attention). The first garment is beastly, while the second…
I became the pastor of Westminster Bible Church in Bowling Green, Kentucky soon after completing my Ph.D. in church history. On paper, it was the ideal church for me. Even the name, I thought smacked of my preferences: the Westminster Confession with idealistic Biblicism. I didn’t know it had been,…
Why do we believe in the resurrection of Jesus? It itself, it is utterly unbelievable, as the two disciples on the road to Emmaus also concluded (Luke 24:19-24). But why is it so unbelievable? Are there not many stories of a dead man or woman coming back to life? Stories…
In the first installment of this two-part essay, we provided a rough outline of a thick theological account of Christian hope. We concluded with mention of important critiques of such traditional views on hope, that by orienting Christians to place their ultimate hope in God and the future consummation of…
Dare we hope in the midst of “ negative world ”? The idea of the “negative world” has recently served as a helpful framework for many to come to terms with the fact that Western societies (particularly the United States) are aggressively turning against their Christian roots and moral values.…
In his prologue, Luke tells us that his gospel history is an “orderly account” (1:3). Although generally chronological, time is not the only or the main organizing principle for his history. To argue for Luke’s main theme would take up too much space, but instead I want to explore one…
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Poor Joseph, we say. He’s on the margins of every Christmas story, every depiction in art, every medieval dramatic rendition. Leave it to Barth to find theological significance in Joseph’s marginality: Speaking of the Virgin Birth of Jesus, Barth says that “The male has nothing to do with this birth.…
You know the scene in the movie: The hero, finding that he can no longer resort to half-measures and fighting through intermediaries, decides he must take things into his own hands, and challenges the villain in hand-to-hand combat. That is incarnation.
David Martin’s Christian Language and Its Mutations: Essays in Sociological Understanding has some good moments. The big problem first: He seems to assume that sacred and secular are divided by a given (though fluid) boundary, and thus argues that Christianity must “adjust to” and “compromise with” the languages and mores…
When I see books with titles like Ideas That Changed the World I have one main reaction: Suspicion. That suspicion increases when the book is filled with splashy photos and sidebars full of soundbite-sized analysis. In the hands of Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, author of Millennium and an acclaimed history of food,…
At 23, James Frey had already been a drunk for over a decade, was addicted to crack, wanted in several states, subject to fits of violent Fury, a battered mess. Without knowing how, he ended up in a rehab center in Minnesota. A Million Little Pieces (Doubleday, 2003) is the…
David Bentley Hart’s The Beauty of the Infinite looks to be one of those books to savor, read, reread, mark, and inwardly digest. I’ve only read a bit of it, but it’s as masterful as his articles. (Stylisically, the book is by turns moving and maddening; I’ve never seen anyone…
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