Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Whatever else the 2016 Presidential cycle has accomplished, it has brought the chasm between nationalism and globalism into sharp relief. Many see this divide as the issue of the campaign (Robert Merry) or of the century (Pat Buchanan). It seems to be a choice we have to make. Christians must…
Salvation is a gift. The righteousness of justification (Romans 5:17) and eternal life (Romans 6:23) are gifts freely offered. According to Risto Saarinen ( God and the Gift ), “God is directly called the giver 104 times [in Scripture], of which 42 are in John’s Gospel and John’s Letters. In…
In the last 40 odd years of studying the Bible, I have read more essays and commentaries on Deuteronomy 6:4 than I can recall. I have also more than twice changed my view on what should be the correct translation of Israel’s central confession. What is so complicated? After the…
Satan is currently bound from gathering the nations in kingly rebellion so that Jesus might gather them in priestly unity. Everything which Scripture records for us, no matter how mundane or mysterious, exists as part of a process of growth to maturity. This transformation is achieved through relationships established by…
God’s people are a missionary people, and this is not true only of the New Testament church. God called Abraham to bless the Gentiles through him, and one of Israel’s recurring sins was her failure to carry out this mission. Israel was supposed evoke praise from the Gentiles, but instead…
Are you ready for the New Year? Are you ready to follow Jesus wherever He takes you this year? Are you read to follow Him into the garden? Are you ready to stay at His side to be arrested, interrogated, tortured, crucified, buried? Are you ready to follow Jesus wherever…
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Jeanne Halgren Kilde opens her When Church Became Theatre with a comparison of New Haven's First Church of Christ (built 1814) with First Baptist of Minneapolis (built 1886). There had been a shift in the exterior, from “the classical pastiche of Greek and Roman to a medieval one with Gothic…
In Psalm 80, the Psalmist is dismayed at Yahweh’s abandonment of His vine. Isaiah (Isaiah 5) laments but is not dismayed. He knows why the lover, his friend, has abandoned His vineyard-bride and now brings an indictment against her. What kind of grapes did Yahweh want? What kind of wine…
Human beings are temporal creatures, but our experience of time isn’t merely of the relentless tick-tock of clock time. Time has quality as well as duration. We can spend an hour waiting for a late bus, or we can spend an hour absorbed in a book or a lively conversation.…
In a NYT piece on a recent Galilean artifact, Isabel Kershner writes, “Experts have long believed that in the period before Herod’s Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, synagogues were used as a general place of assembly and learning, something like a neighborhood community center. The more formal conception of…
In an essay on “Reformation” in her recent collection, The Givenness of Things , Marilynne Robinson observes that Latin remained culturally dominant in England even into the age of Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and Julian of Norwich. Latin's hegemony “did have the advantage of making the learned classes mutually intelligible across…
“The bare fact is,” says Rowan Williams ( The Edge of Words ), “that the material world speaks .” Material agents speak, “and this speech is not . . . a chance decorative addition to mechanical process, but an activity that is implicated in the entire complex of finite agency.…
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