Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the first post of this series, I proposed that the sacraments of baptism and communion are the nexus point for the evangelical and ecumenical movements. In the following post , I proposed a new orientation for ecumenism – a conciliarity of the cross – with the necessary confession of…
“Contextualization” is now, and has been for a long time, the buzzword for the day. 1 Missionary effort in non-Western countries is all about “contextualization” — making our communication of the Gospel, if not the Gospel itself, fit into the culture to whom we from the West speak. 2 There…
In my previous post , I highlighted the sacraments as the point of convergence between evangelicalism and ecumenism arguing that baptism and communion are presented in the New Testament as signs of the gospel that simultaneously enact and remember union with Christ and the unity of Christ’s body. I concluded…
Click HERE for Part I of this series. What does baptism have to do with culture? As I said in the previous essay, the short answer is “everything!” To begin with, baptism is baptism into Jesus’ death (Romans 6:3). Paul explains this as the crucifixion of the “old man” (“old…
In the accounts of our Lord’s nativity and early childhood, so familiar to us from many years of Advent and Christmas services, we often fail to recognize in them the gentle intimations of a greater nativity that is yet to come. The attentive ear, however, can discover in these passages…
Isaiah warns that Yahweh is coming to remove Judah’s leaders in every area of social, economic and political life so completely that there will be no one left to lead besides children (3:4) and women (v. 12). As Isaiah goes on, however, it becomes clear that the women of Judah…
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Love has power to transform the world and lovers. "Love is the answer to the despair in which a reality is lost that knows nothing other than law, fate, and will" (74). Rosenstock-Huessy makes this claim in his Sociology , but he's not being gauzily sentimental. Love takes public form…
What did the fathers who formulated the Nicene Creed mean to assert when they described the relationship between Father and Son with the term homoouios , "same substance"? In what sense "substance" and in what sense "same"? Surveying the usage of this terminology before Nicea, Christopher Stead ( Divine Substance…
Through the administration of the mystery, the manifold wisdom of God is made know through the church to rulers and authorities in the heavenly places (Ephesians 3:9-10). The “mystery” is something hidden in God for ages past and now revealed in Christ. In Ephesians, the mystery is the union of…
Public discourse, it is often argued, has to be conducted in common language, and religious language isn't common. Religion has to be left in the "vestibule." Where does that perception come from? asks Charles Taylor . Taylor traces it to an epistemological distinction: "There is secular reason, which everyone can…
Stephen Holmes ( Quest for the Trinity ) summarizes Gregory of Nyssa's response to Eunomius's use of divine names: "Gregory is scathing about Eunomius's assumption that the divine essence can be adequately named. His arguments on this point are often unsatisfactory, turning regularly on the assumption that the same divine…
Lenn Goodman's essay in Theology and the Soul of the Liberal State presents a devastating critique of Rawlsian political liberalism. The fundamental issue, Goodman claims, is that Rawls treats individual decisions as public acts, and therefore believes that liberalism needs to curtail the influence of ideologies even in the voting…
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