Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Brian: This is, I guess, the ultimate news flash. Maybe the last one. Just a couple of minutes ago a lot of people ascended up into the air and met the returning Jesus Christ. At least that seems to be what happened. As you can see, our cameras are on…
Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who knows where mythology leaves off and history begins–or which id which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that…
One of the mysteries in Esther is why Mordecai refused to acknowledge Haman. We are never explicitly told, and such guesses as that he was continuing Yahweh’s war against Amalek do not carry weight. If such was Mordecai’s purpose he was in sin, because it was Yahweh’s war, not his.…
Below are two views of marriage that came out of an e-mail exchange. The first is a kind of of phenomenology of marriage, and of behavior within marriage. It is who we are by nature. It is bad news, very bad news. The second entry is what can be done…
The previous essay on “Monocovenantalism” brought up this matter, so a few comments here. In this area also the mindless militants have perverted the conversation. The notion that the death of Jesus was insufficient for our justification and that we must also have an imputation of His perfect life in…
Repeatedly over the last several years a variety of characters have accused the so-called “Federal Vision” of being “monocovenantal.” Many other wild and unsubstantiated accusations against the “Federal Vision” have been made, of course. Recently I learned that two of the men on the Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s study committee on…
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Ezekiel is the only OT writer to promise a “new heart” to Israel (18:31; 36:26).  He promises hearts of flesh in place of hearts of stone.  What has given the people of Judah hearts of flesh in the first place? Ezekiel 14:1-7 gives an answer: They have set (stone -…
Near the end of his recent Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults , Christian Smith summarizes the argument of a 1995 article by N. Jay Demerath of the University of Massachusetts.  Demerath writes, that the widely reported decline of liberal Protestantism may in fact signal…
Athanasius appeals to the baptismal formula to show that the Son must be Creator: If he re-creates in baptism along with the Father, He must have created from the beginning.  But this raises the question, Is the Father insufficient in Himself?  Athanasius, strikingly, does not answer by appealing to the…
Jesus says, “Take up your cross and follow Me,” which is to say, “Be willing to die with me.”  Instead the disciples flee. But it gets worse.  The word “sword” is used six times in Matthew 26:47-56, three times in verse 52 alone.  (Otherwise, Matthew uses the word only once,…
John Milbank throws down a challenging gauntlet to Protestants in the Afterword to The Radical Orthodoxy Reader .  He explains Radical Orthodoxy as a continuation of the attack on extrinicism launched by the nouvelle theologie .  Barth, he argues following the critiques of Przywara and Erik Peterson, “ignored both the…
Bonhoeffer shows how love of God and love for His creation can be reconciled by using a musical analogy: “God wants us to love him eternally with our whole hearts - not in such a way as to injure or weaken our earthly love, but to provide a kind of…
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