Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
What is below is fairly self-explanatory. This is an exchange I had with a local liberal clergyman on the subject of abortion. The circumstances of the debate are included in the text itself. I initially e-mailed this out to a list of clergy in our city after a local (and…
The seemingly humdrum parts of the Bible often hide overlooked wisdom. Take, for example, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Their stories aren't exactly the most gripping or memorable. They are far less concrete than, say, the story of the Exodus. No one in Ezra is stricken blind or devoured…
For most of the past century, philosophical perspectives on life in the western world have been overtly grim and pessimistic. The optimism of the Enlightenment, generated by confidence in the scientific method and the potential of an increasingly civilized humanity to redress the evils of the world, was shattered by…
Chiastic structures are found all over the Bible, and in recent decades commentators have become more adept at spotting them. But identifying these literary structures is only part of the challenge. There remains the challenge of understanding what they mean. Part of the answer is found in the recognition that…
Part 1 can be found HERE . Clearly, more than just getting worship right is important in changing the world, but since worship is the central act of God’s people, performed on the first day of the week at the center of the world before the very face of God,…
“Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed.” ( Luke 11:27 ) Arguing for Christian morality in a secular society is difficult. A culture which accepts evolutionary dogma has no intellectual place — or inherent desire — for absolute morality, since it believes morality…
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Citing Deut 16:9-12 and the Gezer Calendar, K. Lawson Younger says in NIV Application commentary on Ruth, “the time period from the beginning of the barley harvest to the end of the wheat harvest was normally seven weeks, concluding at Pentecost.” Presumably, this was the festival that Boaz was celebrating…
Augustine is sometimes accused of ontologizing the effects of sin. City of God 14.13 seems to support this: “When [Adam] turned toward himself . . . his being became less complete than when he clung to Him Who exists supremely. Thus, to forsake God and to exist in oneself -…
Augustine rebuts Stoic notions of apatheia and eupatheia in Book 14 of the city of God. He says that Christian experience even those emotions that Stoics denounce - distress and pain and desire - and he roots these experiences in the fact that Christians live in the present age “because…
A colleague, Jayson Grieser, pointed me to Paul Cantor’s little book on Hamlet a few months ago, but I have only recently been able to look at it. It’s superb. Cantor argues that the play dramatizes a conflict between the classical heroism revived by the Renaissance and the Christian constraints…
In City of God, 11.16, Augustine observes the reality of marginal utility: “So far as the freedom of judgment is concerned . . . the reason of the thoughtful man is far different from the necessity of one who is in need, or the desire of the pleasure-seeker. For reason…
INTRODUCTION Jesus gives the Twelve authority to heal, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. He does not give them authority to escape persecutors. Persecution is an inevitable part of the mission of the Crucified. THE TEXT “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.…
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