Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
My first title for this series of posts was “Evangelical Sacramental Ecumenism” – not exactly a clickbait title. But those three words, evangelical, sacramental, and ecumenical, say a lot: The centrality of the gospel; a focus on baptism, bread, and wine; and the quest for visible unity among diverse churches.…
I can imagine someone reading the title of this essay and saying to himself, "I have two questions. First, what in the world is “contextualization”?" Second, even before hearing the answer to the first question, he may wonder, "what does baptism have to do with such an awkward and vague…
Deuteronomy 21:18-21 My colleague Ralph Smith has recently written on this passage, here . I entirely agree with Ralph's thrust, which is typological, that the passage is ultimately aimed at the entire nation of Israel itself as the rebellious son. But what I am thinking is from another perspective, perhaps…
In the previous article in this series, I drew attention to the threefold meaning of the Spirit of God descending as a dove on Jesus at His baptism. On a related note, I also argued that 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and Titus 3:3-7 were parallel passages that addressed the same issues…
The National Anthem protest is misguided. So too the conservative backlash. The Church’s response has been disappointing. I address each in turn. The greatest triumph of the American Civil Rights Movement was its seizing of the moral high ground in American politics. It did so by insisting only on those…
Peter Leithart’s book, The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism , argues that baptism is parallel to and the fulfillment of the old covenant rite of priestly ordination. But this is not something explicitly stated in the New Testament. Why, then, should we believe it? Leithart shows in…
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Gary Greenberg raises doubts about “brain death” as a definition of death. The standard was introduced largely to facilitate organ donation and transplant, and it has become a fixture of bioethics. Greenberg points out that “brain death is not quite as certain as these bioethicists might like. A doctor cant…
What does God commit Himself to when He makes a covenant with Abraham? Genesis 17 gives a number of specifics: Abraham will be a multitude of nations, his name will become Abraham, Yahweh will be God to Abraham and to his seed and will give them the land. Twice in…
Everyone is talking about “apocalyptic” today. I join the chorus and reflect on CS Lewis’s The Great Divorce as an exercise in apocalyptic theology.
Rosenstock-Huessy points out in one of the letters collected in Judaism Despite Christianity that Kant worked out his entire philosophy in conscious dialogue with Rousseau: “While he himself wants to stand metaphysics on its head, just as Kepler and Newton stood physics, yet he compares for his part Rousseau and…
Rosenstock ( Judaism Despite Christianity: The 1916 Wartime Correspondence Between Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Franz Rosenzweig , 127-8) objects to Rosenzweig’s characterization of church history as a move from the church of the spirit to the church of dogma and tradition. Rosenstock thinks the dualism nonsense: “Every Christian experiences the dogmas…
Rosenzweig locates a fundamental similarity between Judaism and Christianity in their mutual affirmation of protology and eschatology, which give form and meaning to the “middle things” that occur between A and B - that is, the middle things of world history. Rosenstock objects that the two are not equal simply…
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