Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Paradosis Center at John Brown University in Siloam Spring, Arkansas, put on its first conference last week, it was a remarkable event. It was an ecumenical conference including Orthodox (John Behr, Edith Humphrey, others), Catholic (Rusty Reno, Michael Root, others), and Evangelical (Timothy George, David Lyle Jeffrey). Unusually for…
Naphtali Meshel observes in his new The "Grammar" of Sacrifice that scholars have been talking for decades about the "grammatical" character of ritual and sacrifice in general, but have never actually analyzed a specific ritual or sacrificial system grammatically. Some even talk about a "universal grammar" of sacrifice "even though…
Some Christians are rather breezy about the problem of evil. We shouldn't be. Do I need to remind you of the grisly beheadings that have taken place over the past few weeks? Do I need to remind you of the blood of innocents that’s been spilled in our own country?…
Have you ever been to a wedding where the heavens opened and a voice declared the couple “husband and wife”? Few of us have. Beautiful as they are, most marriages are quite mundane. Yet when Jesus talks about marriage, He describes it as something that God does: “What God has…
Jesus is the last and greatest of the Prophets. He is the Prophet that Moses predicted (Deuteronomy 18). That means He gives the final word, brings the blueprints for the final temple, speaks the final world into existence, and has complete and permanent access to the divine court, where He…
Paul stands against those who are “troubling” or “disturbing” the Galatians churches ( tarasso ; 1:7; also in 5:10). The reference seems to be two great troublers from the Old Testament. First, Achan is described as a “troubler” for the problems he causes in the aftermath of the battle at…
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O’Donovan begins Desire of Nations with a discussion of post-Enlightenment criticism of authority, the unmasking of the self-interest of power that is at the heart of modern and post-modern thought. This unmasking, he says, originates in Christianity, but detached from theology and the church it has degenerated “into little more…
I’m no poet, but sometimes I feel poetic. What’s that feel like? It feels like, “I wish I were a poet so I translate that to language.” But there are a couple of other things going on too. One is a desire for explanation. When the spring breeze comes through…
An article of mine about the cross and what Paul calls the “powers” is posted on the First Things web site this morning: www.firstthings.com
Luther presents several arguments against the Roman Catholic claim that marriage is a sacrament. First, he claims that it doesn’t fit the definition of a sacrament, which includes a divine promise and a sign: “We said that there is in every sacrament a word of divine promise, to be believed…
Marriage was not considered a sacrament in the strict sense by the earliest church fathers or in medieval era. This is partly because there was no “sacrament” in the strict sense; the word was used loosely for “sacred signs.” Augustine described marriage as a “sacrament,” but he didn’t mean by…
INTRODUCTION Jesus begins His teaching ministry offering eightfold beatitude to Israel (Matthew 5:1-12); His teaching ministry ends with an eightfold woe against Jerusalem and a prophecy about the destruction of the temple (Matthew 23-25). Jesus’ life with Israel recapitulates Israel ’s history, which begins in exodus and ends with exile.…
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