Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Romans 8:31-39 is better sung than commented upon. It’s a thrilling, ecstatic hymn of boisterous assurance that God’s purposes will be accomplished. Yet, I will attempt to comment on them. If we sing Paul’s hymn, let’s make sure we sing with understanding. Given the character of these verses, it’s easy…
"An ethic unshaped by eschatology is neither Jesus’ nor Christian.” - Tremper Longman How does an immature culture grow up? Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver is about the dangers of being lost in adolescence. By the end of the movie, the viewer is pointed to a road we infer leads to…
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Prolegomena 1. “You’re a pastor,” my new friend says as we sit down, “and you’re a massage therapist. How does that work?” To her, Christianity implies stuffy ideology, a disregard of the physical. A Christian massage therapist is an oddity; a pastor massage therapist is nearly a contradiction in terms.…
54% of Poles think favorably of Americans, only 13% unfavorably, according to Centrum Badania Opinii Spolecznej . Ten years ago, the numbers were 44% and 21% respectively. Twenty years ago, they were 64% and 6%. Back in the 1990s, Americans were the most liked nation among Poles. Now they are…
Stones of Life and Death Of course, the sex of a child is not a choice between light and darkness or life and death. Sex, like circumcision, is a horizontal demarcation, a delegation of roles within humanity. In contrast, the white stone and the black stone within the “liturgical scrotum”…
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In his Octavius , Minucius Felix includes a description of Christian initiation from his pagan character, Caecilianus: “the story about the initiation of young novices is as much to be detested as it is well known. An infant covered over with meal, that it may deceive the unwary, is placed…
Xenophon’s Cyrus was the model Hellenistic king, ruling through generosity: “if he wished to have anyone of his friends courted by the multitude, to such a one he would send presents from his table. And that device proved effective; for even to this day everybody pays more diligent court to…
Drake notes that the “one unwritten, but never to be violated, rule of the game of empire was this: although the Senate could be alienated with impunity so long as the loyalty of the troops was secure, it was impossible to alienate both Senate and military and still survive.” It’s…
Drake suggests that Constantine’s laws opening up appeals to episcopal courts were motivated not by concern “with the power of the bishop or of the church,” nor with a large effort to ensure the triumph of the church. Those conclusions arise from “the limited perspective imposed by overconcentration on Constantine’s…
If Constantine wanted to dominate the church, the obvious thing for him to do would be to try to widen the divisions in the church and keep them competing with each other. That’s not what he did. Instead of “divide and conquer,” he did his best to unite the church,…
Worship seems so easy. We jump into the car and drive over, find a place to sit, and then we just get started. What could be hard about that? When we think about what we are doing, though, it doesn’t look quite so easy. We are entering into the presence…
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