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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Words are central to human relationships. We can see only the outside of other people, but words bring out things from within. But relationships are not just words, but an exchange of words, offering our words and getting words back, giving and receiving words. A one-sided conversation is no conversation.…
It was an ancient axiom that truth comes before error. “The real thing always exists before the representation of it,” Tertullian wrote, “the copy comes later.” This means “truth comes first and falsification afterwards.” The “always” in first statement is self-evidently false; the reality is frequently the opposite. In some…
And another thing: Who could believe that you could make a movie that is not just watchable but deeply engaging with basically two people, one of whom says nothing? What kind of artistic chutzpah does it take to try to wring drama out of a 2-hour monologue? What kind of…
Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 Persona is brilliant cinematic philosophy. Elisabet, an actress, becomes confused during a performance and falls silent. Her psychiatrist gives this diagnosis: She got tired of playing roles, putting on masks, and knew that every word she spoke involved some sort of performance. So she stopped speaking. But…
Is it fair to use the sequence of offerings in Leviticus 8 and Numbers 6 as models for Christian worship? After all, these two texts are specialized - the “filling” ceremony for the priests and the rededication of a Nazirite. When we find the same sequence in Chronicles, it’s also…
Carlin Barton closes a brilliant article comparing concepts of honor, sacrifice, and sacramentum found among martyrs and gladiators with some observations on the wider cultural import of her work. One of her main aims is to overcome the perception that Christians and Romans were working in completely separate symbolic universes,…
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