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…
We are in the middle of our campaign for the end of the fiscal year. We've raised $30,000 from some major donors, and need to raise another $70,000 to meet our budget. Please consider becoming a regular donor , and keep reading to learn about a great opportunity. This brief…
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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Dale Dykema of Covenant Home Curriculum writes: “I have just finished reading Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali Moslem woman converted to Dutch Humanism. Her efforts to expose the violence of Islam, especially its oppression of women is noteworthy. Of particular interest to me was how this woman discovered…
The liberal state is a free state, but it’s clear from Spinoza that freedom in a liberal state is limited to unlimited freedom of thought and speech. Action is controlled by the state, including religious action: “God has no special kingdom among men except in so far as He reigns…
The genealogy is pretty clear: Pietist-leaning Collegiants, with affinities to the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century, influence the theological and political view of Spinoza, leading him to write a treatise where he defends two central Anabaptist/Pietist clams: a) he attacks the tyranny of the letter and b) he argues for…
Another from Hatzfeld: “The Saturday after the [President’s] plan crash was the usual choir rehearsal day at the church in Kibungo. We sang hymns in good feeling with our Tutsi compatriots, our voices still blending in chorus. On Sunday morning we returned at the appointed hour for mass; they did…
In his harrowing book on the Rwandan killers of 1994, Jean Hatzfeld quotes one young man: “Suddenly Hutus of every kind were patriotic brothers without any partisan discord. We were through playing around with political words. We were no longer in our each-to-his-won mood. We were doing a job to…
According to Emmanuel Kolini and Peter Holmes ( Christ Walks Where Evil Reigned ), the Hutus and Tutsis of Rwanda were originally ethnically indistinguishable. Prior to colonialization, the difference was “vocational,” social and economic. Tutsis were cattle herders, Hutus farmers; Tutsis were Abel, Hutus Cain. When the Belgians took over,…
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