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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P eter Harrison points out in his The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science (10–11) that the Reformation coincided with the rediscovery of ancient skepticism. While the Reformers were undermining traditional Catholic sources of authority from one side, Montaigne and others were corroding certainty from the other. Descartes…
Karl Shuve's contribution to Apocalypses in Context traces the Christian use of Jewish apocalyptic, especially of the Book of the Watchers from 1 Enoch, which even makes it into the universal canon of the New Testament (Jude). The Watcher story appears in Justin, who “blames ‘every evil' on the Watcher…
Thomas Fabisiak wonders, What does the New Jerusalem have to do with modernity? ( Apocalypses in Context ). Ask most modern philosophers, and the answer will be, Not much. Fabisiak speaks of the “'rhetorical construction' of modernity” that takes the form of a dismissal or expulsion of apocalyptic and all…
In a 2011 New Yorker profile of Norwegian chess champion Magnus Carlsen, D.T. Max digresses to explain the logic behind the Soviet interest in chess: “Lenin, an enthusiastic player, made the game a priority for the new nation. In 1920, Alexander Ilyin-Zhenevsky, a commissar of Soviet chess, wrote that chess,…
In the middle stanzas of “Erotikos Logos,” watching someone else reading, Scott Cairns ( Slow Pilgrim , 278) writes, “So much, of course, depends upon your own willingness to find something worthy here, even as you bring - as you must - something worthy to the effort. So much of…
Andrew Pettegree ( Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion ) observes a shift in rhetorical tone in Protestant-Catholic debates between the early and mid sixteenth century: “While much of the polemical writing of Luther’s day was rumbustious in tone, making liberal use of ridicule and ad hominem attacks, it still…
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