Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The doctrine of justification is precious among Protestants. And it should be. The fact that God has declared our sins forgiven and that we have a righteous standing in the sight of God united to Christ is comforting and brings great joy. Unfortunately, the biblical teaching on justification is, many…
The Old Testament priests were given a number of seemingly disparate duties. As everyone knows, the priests led the sacrificial worship of Israel; only the priests could sprinkle blood on the altar or within the tabernacle, and only they could approach the altar to turn sacrificial animals into smoke. But…
M issional ecclesiology is all the rage these days, but for many being “missional” means downplaying or even eliminating concern for the “internal” life of the church, particularly its liturgical life. Missional and liturgical, mission and communio , are locked in zero-sum combat. That cannot be right. The liturgy is…
An old friend of mine, now passed into Heaven, started to say this in relationship to his sometimes troubled family, in the last quarter of his life, "I just had to take responsibility for the whole thing..." That was the seed for a new reading of the Gospel for me,…
She departed the port, dressed in her best ceremonial regalia, with tassels and flags fluttering from her mast and rigging. She stood tall, robed in mist, crowned in white, and backlit by the rising sun. There she sat, shimmering and spotless; with a perfect ragtop, and a full tank of…
John the Baptist is presented in the gospels as the fulfillment of the Old Testament promise that God would send His messenger to prepare the way for the coming of the glory of the Lord (Is. 40), and the promise to send Elijah before Him to turn the people to…
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A reader, Dan Glover, responds to my comments about Milbank’s take on the faith-seeking-understanding motto. He’s more correcting my presentation of Milbank than Milbank himself: ” I think that . . . he is wrong to say that ‘this is fundamentally an eschatological rather than an epistemological point.’ I think…
Brink Lindsey of the CATO Institute writes in the March 12 TNR that the key to success is, surprise, hard work and parental involvement. A couple of quotations: A study led by Florida State psychologist Anders Ericsson found that a “common denominator” in their study of top performers in various…
In an article in Religion Compass , David Janzen challenges Milgrom’s understanding of sacrifice as “purgation” and his claims about the effects of sacrifice. Rather than purging, sacrifice emphasizes Yahweh’s difference from Israel, the requirement of Israel’s obedience, and the consequences of her failure to obey. He concludes: “But the…
In his NIV Application commentary on Mark, David Garland interprets Jesus’ statement about the temple as a “house of prayer for all nations” as a condemnation of the separation of Gentiles in the temple: “During his entire ministry Jesus has been gathering in the impure outcasts and the physically maimed,…
In the introduction to his contribution to the Oxford History of the United States ( What Hath God Wrought , 2007), Daniel Walker Howe quotes an 1850 Methodist women’s magazine’s ecstasies over the telegraph: “This noble invention is to be the means of extending civilization, republicanism, and Christianity over the…
Ratzinger charged that after Vatican II, some Catholics “deliberately raised ‘desacralization’ to the level of a program.” By this, he was referring to a liturgical theology that begins from the abolition of the temple and the rending of the vile and concludes that “the death of Jesus, outside the City…
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