Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I have never heard anyone say that the Bible is impractical, but I have heard people, after an in depth exegesis of a passage, ask for the practical application. Offer a class on childrearing, marriage, finance and the church members flock to it; offer a course on Leviticus, the visions…
Stones External and Internal The modern practice of dismantling the Bible into a shambles of documents authored in response to disparate historical events rather than viewing it as a unified testimony inspired by God is a surefire way to miss what is actually going on in the text. This failure…
King Asa of Judah made a strong start, purging the land of idols, altars, and images, and winning a war against the ginormous Cushite army led by Zerach. It all unraveled in his final years. From his thirty-fifth year to the forty-first year, when his reign came to an end,…
What appears to be Paul’s first recorded statement on justification comes in Acts 13, in a sermon at Pisidian Antioch. It's can serve as a summary of Paul's letter to the Romans, and throws some important light on the themes of that letter. Paul begins his sermon with a quick…
Iago as Tempter The answer to our first question — whether or not Othello is really great tragedy — has already pointed the way to the answer for the second question — Was Othello a noble Moor or a fool? The two questions, of course, are necessarily related. The fall…
When Adam McIntosh was ordained as Pastor of Saint David’s Church (CREC) in Houston on June 11, 2017, it was the culmination of decades of preparation. Adam is the product of two continents and three Christian traditions. Born in Paducah, Kentucky, he lived his early years partly in Jericho, where…
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Mbiti’s vision of the impact of the gospel on culture justifies Philip Jenkins’s description of Southern Hemisphere Christianity as “the next Christendom.” For Mbiti, Christianity is “a total way of life, a world view, a religious ideology (if one may phrase it that way), an existence and a commitment -…
John Mbiti, a Kenyan African theologian, describes the impact of a vernacular translation of the Bible: “When the translation is first published, especially that of the New Testament and more so of the whole Bible, the church in that particular language areas experiences its own Pentecost. The church is born…
As Caputo explains it, the Cartesian description of God as causa sui entails an important re-definition of cause. The sort of redefinition is important. Modernity prides itself on its embrace of movement and dynamism, and portrays the pre-modern world as insufferably static. The change in the meaning of cause tells…
Jean-Luc Marion sees a fateful change in theology proper when Descartes describes God as “causa sui” rather than as “uncaused cause” (which was the scholastic description). What’s the deal? Marion says that talking about a self-caused God makes no sense. As John Caputo summarizes the point: “It makes no sense…
It’s nearly midnight, and nineteen-year-old Mari Asai sits reading a thick book in a lonely Denny’s in central Tokyo. Tall, lanky, long-haired Takahashi enters the restaurant carrying a trombone case, walks by her table, recognizes her, and introduces himself as a friend of Mari’s sister, the beautiful teen model Eri…
The history of conversos , Jews forced to convert to Christianity, is filled with horrific tragedy and irony. In 1506 in Lisbon, Christians played Simeon and Levi to “Shechemite” Jews (cf. Genesis 34) as mobs slaughtered a couple of thousand conversos . One would have thought that baptism might provide…
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