Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Your first born is a novelty. Everything seems special and unique. No one’s child is like yours. Then, over time, you begin to make mistakes. Some strategies don’t work on the additional personalities born into your family, or they simply don’t scale from a practical perspective. With maturity, you realize…
Could Jesus have sinned? Before answering the question, it's best to run through a couple of qualifiers. First, scripture clearly teaches He did not sin. Second, I realize the seeming futility when discussing hypothetical situations. The question of the peccability of Jesus, or Jesus's capacity to sin, is in reality,…
The first time I saw the inside of a prison was in 1999; I was 16. I hadn’t knocked over a fruit stand or been caught stealing hubcaps, I was just an unsuspecting teenager playing piano for a Louisiana gospel group. One Wednesday evening in October, my pastor and leader…
The act of naming carries a lot of weight in the Bible. Naming denotes authority and possession; the namer signifying that he understands the thing named, and therefore possesses the requisite wisdom to rule over it. God set the stage for naming when he named the domains during the first…
This short essay makes an obvious point: Church growth is a matter of the rate of entry into a church relative to the rate of exit from that church. Perhaps church growth literature has long recognized that fact. Yet given the greater focus in church – at least in my…
If you’ve not yet heard of Aaron Renn’s three worlds framework , here’s the quick version: once upon a time, being a Christian was a net social good in American society. Whatever was going on behind the scenes in elite institutions, the general rank-and-file perception of Christianity was positive. That…
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In the “how other people live” category: Hernando de Soto ( The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else ) argues that the key obstacle to Third World prosperity is the invisibility of their assets, and the assets are invisible because property rights are…
How do we sense objects?  Our instincts tell us that objects are just there, waiting for us to come along to sense them. Augustine’s instincts were otherwise.  He admitted that “the sense does not proceed from the body that is seen but from the body of the sentient living being…
Augustine’s trinitarian account of love is often understood as a purely formal correspondence: Love requires three - the lover, the beloved, and the love itself - and, whaddya know?, there are three Persons in the God who is love. Augustine sometimes sounds like that: “Love means loving and something loved…
“Classical theism” is supposed to have given us a static, immobile God. On the contrary: One of Athanasius’ central complaints against the Arians is that they denied the inherent fruitfulness, generative power, and creativity of God.  If the Son is not eternal, “proper” to the essenceof the Father, then the…
INTRODUCTION Jesus goes to a garden to reverse Adam’s sin.  Instead of seizing fruit, the Last Adam submits to His Father and drinks the cup.  In the end, all His helpers – His Eve – flee, and He is left alone to face His accusers. THE TEXT “Then Jesus said…
When Jesus announces the betrayal by Judas at the Passover, He alludes to Psalm 41:9.  The one who dipped his hand with me in the dish, Jesus says, betrays Him; centuries earlier, David had written, “My close friend, in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his…
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