Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Thus says the Lord: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more” (Jer 31:15). The Night of the Hunter belongs on every Christian’s Christmas list. My family has even…
One important part of Jesus's birth narrative is the presence of angels. The angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary, announcing that she would bear a son. And then, on the night Jesus was born, a whole host of angels appeared to the shepherds. Angels are mysterious creatures to us.…
I was settled nicely into my chair and listening to the conversation in an undergrad religion seminar, my last required course to graduate. Though a few Christians sat scattered around the room, the course itself was dedicated to poking holes in traditional understandings of the Bible: our readings deconstructed notions…
God’s symbols belong to Him and to His people. They are constantly at work in the world, including the world of film, music, painting, architecture, and other artforms. You cannot escape God’s symbols or the meaning He has woven into the created order. Artists use and borrow God’s symbols, whether…
For centuries, Christians identified Israel in the Old Testament as a single, literal ethnic group, often called “the Jews.” Even supersessionists – those who believed the Church superseded Israel – assumed the clear-cut, technical definition of “Israel” in the Bible is the ethnic group. However, a deeper dive into Genesis,…
Misreading Intent In the opening verses of Matthew 11, the reader is confronted immediately by John the baptizer who has been imprisoned since 4:12. John poses a question to Jesus, inquiring from prison as to whether or not he is Israel’s awaited Messiah or if they should anticipate another: “Are…
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In his contribution to Denominationalism , Winthrop Hudson suggests that one of the principles of English Independent ecclesiology was the refusal to “make our present judgment and practice a binding law unto ourselves for the future” (25). It's a stance based on a recognition of fallibility and proneness to sin.…
The Greek kapnos (“smoke”) appears twelve times in Revelation. Hold that number, because it might be significant. The twelve uses are grouped into six scenes, alternating between smoke having to do with the worship and glory of God and smoke from hell or hell's allies: A. Smoke of incense, 8:4…
“I believe in subjects and objects,” writes David Martin at the outset of his Future of Christianity (4). He illustrates with a sociological example: He believes in “religious visions of the world to come and the objective status of the dynamics of social and political action.” Martin intends to resist…
Jesus tells His disciples that they are being sent into a field to harvest where they had not sown or labored. “One sows, and another reaps” (John 4:35-38). It's a principle of ministry: Ministry starts in the middle. Even in a fresh mission field, the missionary doesn't enter a place…
In a study of American Protestant schisms between 1890 and 1990, John Sutten and Mark Chaves claim that churches don't divide for purely doctrinal reasons, but rather “in response to attempts by denominational elites to achieve organizational consolidation” (171). The 1848 schism within the Plymouth Brethren, for instance, was about…
In an essay on “Rules of Walking in Fellowship,” John Owen claimed that “Union is the main aim and most proper fruit of love ; neither is there any thing or duty of the saints in the gospel pressed with more earnestness and vehemency of exhortation than this.” For Owen,…
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