Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I grew up on the north side of Chicago. My parents were evangelicals and I was raised in the faith. I graduated from a large public high school in which practicing Christians were very few and very far between (though nominal Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox were in abundance), which…
During the recent round table discussion on the future of Protestantism , Peter Leithart advocated a much greater degree of unity in the Church than we presently enjoy. Another participant in the discussion wondered aloud how Leithart's vision would be different from the ministerial associations that presently exist in many…
"But he, wanting to justify himself, said, 'And who is my neighbor?' And Jesus said to him, 'First, your neighbors are the people in your church, then the ones with whom you enjoy greatest doctrinal or ecclesiastical commonality, then those with whom you enjoy less commonality.'" -Said Jesus... never Since…
A number of years ago, I came across something in the Puritan Thomas Goodwin in regard to John 17:22. Goodwin points out that Jesus prays that they (the disciples) might be given the glory of the Father as a means to an end. The end is unity, and the means…
In her prize-winning book, Gilead , Marilynne Robinson uses the pastoral settings of Iowa to challenge ministers to live up to their high callings. One of the most powerful themes in the novel is the pastor’s power to “bless.” The tension in the novel builds as we watch Rev. Ames…
One of the few glaring errors of the Protestant Reformers was the failure to welcome children back to the Lord's Table. Something that seems to go along with this was the exclusion of other kinds of Christians, primarily Roman Catholics, from Holy Communion in Protestant churches. Exclusion of Roman Catholics…
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Book 6 of Bonaventure’s The Soul’s Journey into God, is about the Trinity. The premise is that good is essentially “self-diffusive,” and thus the highest good must be “most self-diffusive.” This highest self-diffusion is not possible unless it is “actual and intrinsic, substantial and hypostatic, natural and voluntary, free and…
According to Richard of St. Victory ( On the Trinity ), God is the fullness and perfection of all goodness. Plotinus said as much. But then Richard adds that nothing is better than charity, something that Plotinus does not say. For Richard, charity cannot be a solitary enterprise; charity must…
David Chilton points out ( Days of Vengeance , 196-7) points out that seven features of the creation are rendered useless when the sixth seal is opened (Revelation 6:12-14): 1. Earth quakes. 2. The sun turns black. 3. The moon turns to blood. 4. Stars fall from heaven. 5. Heaven…
In the course of her lively challenge to goddess-obsessions among scholars ( In the Wake of the Goddess ), Tikva Frymer-Kensky claims that ancient Israel embodied a proto-feminist sexual polity: “There i nothing disinctively ‘female’ about the way women are portrayed in the Bible, nothing particularly feminine about either their…
When the Lamb opens the sixth seal, the earth and sky collapse (Revelation 6:12-17). The earth shakes, the sky grows dark, the world begins to fall apart. Like Egypt in the time of Moses, the Lamb strikes the earth with plagues and, like the Egyptians, the people of the land…
Michael Solana thinks science fiction is doing us a disservice. Nighmarish predictions of the future aren’t new, but Solana thinks that they’ve become pervasive. A sub-sub-genre has taken over the field, and occupied our imagination. Solana writes, “dystopia has appeared in science fiction from the genre’s inception, but the past…
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