Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
What is below is fairly self-explanatory. This is an exchange I had with a local liberal clergyman on the subject of abortion. The circumstances of the debate are included in the text itself. I initially e-mailed this out to a list of clergy in our city after a local (and…
The seemingly humdrum parts of the Bible often hide overlooked wisdom. Take, for example, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Their stories aren't exactly the most gripping or memorable. They are far less concrete than, say, the story of the Exodus. No one in Ezra is stricken blind or devoured…
For most of the past century, philosophical perspectives on life in the western world have been overtly grim and pessimistic. The optimism of the Enlightenment, generated by confidence in the scientific method and the potential of an increasingly civilized humanity to redress the evils of the world, was shattered by…
Chiastic structures are found all over the Bible, and in recent decades commentators have become more adept at spotting them. But identifying these literary structures is only part of the challenge. There remains the challenge of understanding what they mean. Part of the answer is found in the recognition that…
Part 1 can be found HERE . Clearly, more than just getting worship right is important in changing the world, but since worship is the central act of God’s people, performed on the first day of the week at the center of the world before the very face of God,…
“Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed.” ( Luke 11:27 ) Arguing for Christian morality in a secular society is difficult. A culture which accepts evolutionary dogma has no intellectual place — or inherent desire — for absolute morality, since it believes morality…
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In a book written in the late 1370s, the surgeon John Arderne prescribed “the Bible and other tragedies” as remedies. These books were good sources, as Henry Ansgar Kelly explains in summarizing Arderne’s point, “for humorous stories of a good and decent kind that doctors can use to provoke their…
Barth defines faith as the “determination of human action by the being of the Church and therefore by Jesus Christ, by the gracious address of God to man.” While there may be weaknesses with this, there are several commendable things about the definition: 1) It does not polarize faith and…
If, as Barth says, theology NEED not be part of the genus “science,” why has it been so designated? It appears that the impetus is an effort to achieve precisely the things that Barth says it does NOT need from science. Barth says, “As regards method, [theology] has nothing to…
Barth quotes from J. Gerhard, who rejected the designation of theology as a science. One of his grounds was: ” scientiae certitudo ab internis et inhaerentibus principiis, fidei vero ab externis videlicet ab autoritate revelantis pendet ,” which in substance means that science derives its certainty from principles that are…
Jim Jordan has pointed out that the Greek word “oikoumene” is used in the NT to refer to the Hellenistic and Helleno-Roman world, rather than to the entire inhabited earth. It could be translated as “empire.” Against this background, the usage in Heb 2:5 is very striking, since it talks…
A discussion of death in the prefall world led to this thought: What was Adam supposed to do when a big dragon came to his wife and began tempting her to sin? I think he was supposed to do exactly what the Last Adam did: Crush the serpent’s head. But…
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