Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I've pastored a very rural church for well over a decade. Our town has about 1,000 people and will never grow until Jesus returns. 38 people attend our worship on Sundays. Here's a quick list of what we’ve done to grow our church, and what I’ve done to survive pastorally.…
Thanks for sharing so honestly about your current crisis of creativity. I totally understand and relate to that; it’s happened many times in my musical life thus far, and I’ve begun to accept it as a normal rhythm of the creative process. I actually went through a serious dry spell…
The Broken Stones of Israel At Sinai, the tablets of the Law of Moses were broken and restored. The Old Testament is a history of “new covenants,” including that promised in Jeremiah and fulfilled in Zechariah. Ultimately, the vertical Oath and the horizontal Sanctions met in the death of Jesus…
Woe to the sinful nation. Woe to those who enlarge their estates and build their portfolios. Woe to the drunks. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil. Woe to the proud who are wise in their own eyes. Woe to Congressmen who pass unjust laws and to…
The interpretation of Romans 7:7-25 is notoriously difficult. Good scholars disagree on many aspects of the passage, but the central interpretative difficulty concerns the identity of the “I.” Is Paul referring to himself? Is Paul referring to himself pre- or post-conversion? Does the “I” refer to Adam? Is the “I”…
You board the Metra train at Arlington Heights station one afternoon, heading to downtown Chicago for some sight-seeing. As the train departs from the station, a man in jeans, a striped t-shirt, and a Kansas City Royals baseball cap enters your train car, and begins asking to see each passenger’s…
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A final installment of my review of Naphtali Meshel’s The “Grammar” of Sacrifice .
It’s common to distinguish two different types of atonement theory - objective and subjective. Objective theories stress that the death of Jesus achieves something in itself; often objective theories stress the Godward dimension of the atonement, that Jesus has made satisfaction for sin or propitiated wrath by His death. They…
People who don’t know much bout the Bible still know what “knowing in the biblical sense” means. It’s assumed that it’s a common euphemism. But it isn’t. It’s used only in the first few chapters of Genesis, and then in 1 Samuel. Adam knows Eve, and she conceives Cain (Genesis…
At several points in Galatians, Paul distinguishes between the Abrahamic promise and the Mosaic Torah. He charges that his opponents want to return to the obsolete Mosaic system by forcing circumcision on Gentiles. Problem is, circumcision was given to Abraham , not Moses. It seems to be a sign of…
At The Week , Damon Linker poses some uncomfortable questions for advocates of same-sex marriage. “Do you support the right of consenting adult brothers and sisters to marry? If not, why not? What legal or moral principle justifies granting marriage rights to unrelated same-sex couples while denying such rights to…
Zadie Smith finds in a forty-foot beer ad on a nearby wall a summary of a Manhattan creed. Smith writes, “beer used to be sold on the dream of communal fun: have a beer with a buddy, or lots of buddies. People crowded the frame, laughing and smiling. It was…
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