Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
One evening at dusk two men met under a portico near the North wall in Jerusalem. They greeted one another cordially and sat down on a stone bench. They were both Pharisees. One of the men appeared to be uncomfortable and kept looking around nervously. The other said, “Don’t worry,…
John Williamson Nevin’s Controversy With Charles Hodge Over the Imputation of Adam’s Sin (with a Comparison to Robert L. Dabney) If one is blessed to discover George P. Hutchinsons’s monograph on Original Sin in nineteenth-century Reformed thought, 1 no student of American presbyterianism can fail to be fascinated. What once…
If you stop people on the street and ask them, “Where is God?” you’ll get a range of responses from a vague sense that He’s “up there somewhere” to a generic omnipresence (and it goes downhill from there!) What God does in Acts 2 challenges us to develop and apply…
Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as…
John Walton believes that modern Christians have lost multiple worlds: The Lost World of Genesis One; The Lost World of Adam and Eve; The Lost World of Scripture; The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest; The Lost World of the Flood; The Lost World of the Torah. I believe this…
How should the church respond to the pandemic? N.T. Wright has written a book which searches the depths of Scripture to answer this question. Our challenge is that we do not yet understand the pandemic, at least not with any degree of consensus. We don't know whose fault it is,…
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Robert Ellis is not a Marxist. But he finds “food for thought” in some Marxist critiques of the sport-industrial-imperial complex ( Games People Play , 44-5). Sports reflects society, he observes, and some have pointed out the way American football is a mirror of the “clock-factory workforce.” Marxist’s push the…
Speech act theory is something of a fad in evangelical theology. Like all theoretical paradigms, it has its strengths. It is most useful, perhaps, in thinking about preaching and ritual, and also in thinking through (as Nicholas Wolterstorff has done) what it means to say that the Bible is God’s…
Michael Hanby ( No God, No Science? 31) makes the arresting claim that “the equation of abstraction with the movement from particular to general” is “not ontologically innocent.” It instead “reflects the deep-seated mechanistic assumption that the ‘parts’ of reality are ontologically prior to the whole of it, with the…
Lots happens in holy communion. Let’s just say this: The celebration of communion is a memorial of Jesus. A memorial is not only a reminder to the participants (though undoubtedly it is that). More fundamentally, a memorial is directed at God. In the Supper, we memorialize the death of Jesus…
Paul claims that he was shown mercy so that “Jesus might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example ( hupotyposis ) for those who would believe in Him for eternal life” (1 Timothy 1:16). Paul is “typical,” a pattern or impress, for others who find mercy. How exactly? The earlier…
J. Denny Weaver ( Nonviolent Atonement , 7) states a common view among contemporary Mennonites when he argues that traditional atonement theories only work “if one is willing to defend the compatibility of violence and retribution with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” He argues for continuity between the character of…
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