Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For many people Christmas comes on December 25 and is over December 26. The tree is taken down along with the lights and the other decorations, and everyone begins setting the house in order for the new year. No more Christmas hymns. No more celebrations (well, until New Year’s Eve).…
The Ascension and the Incarnation should not be disconnected in our Christmas thinking or celebrations. As N.T. Wright notes, the ascension is "a central and vital feature without which all sorts of other things start to go demonstrably wrong. . . . where the ascension has been ignored or misunderstood,…
“In the Word was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness.” Thus John describes the incarnation of the Son. He comes as the living and life-giving light of the world. That’s good news. In the beginning, God spoke and light shone…
Christmas is all about Jesus. The angels announce Jesus’ birth, shepherds and wise men come to see Jesus, Herod wants to kill Jesus. We occasionally think of the Father who sent the Son, but we keep returning to the Son made flesh in Bethlehem’s manger. Meanwhile, as always, the Spirit…
Christmas is about many things, but one of the chief things revealed in the gospel of Christmas is the humility of God. We don't often think of humility as an attribute of God. If God is glorious and exalted, we think, He must be haughty and proud and self-centered. We…
John famously begins his Gospel with a piece of theology: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Matthew starts with a genealogy. John celebrates Advent with a hymn, Matthew with a list. For John, Jesus is the Word of creation…
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O’Donovan again, asking, What makes “public reason” reasonable? He states the premise that “rational communication is directed to ‘persuasion’ broadly understood, that is to say, it is concerned with communicating reasons for acting, reasons for believing.” These persuasions are nourished within a tradition, but, he insists, they are not “confined…
O’Donovan continues his article by asking in what sense pluralism’s public reason is public. Public and private necessitate one another, and “the private is defined negatively, by privation . . . by walling off, excluding, refusing entry. Private thought, domestic privacy, property, private association, and so on are those withheld…
In a 2008 essay in The Princeton Seminary Bulletin (since reprinted elsewhere), Oliver O’Donovan offers “Reflections on Pluralism.” He wonders at the outset why we add an “ism” to the word, and suggests that understanding “difference as plurality” reflects an anxiety about difference. Not all difference creates anxiety, but only…
1 Kings 10: When the queen of Sheba perceived the wisdom of Solomon, the house he had built, the food of his table, the seating of his servants, the attendance of his waiters and their attire, his cupbearers, there was no more spirit in her. As Pastor Sumpter has said,…
Paul preaches “the mystery.” He wants the Colossians to be fully assured of the mystery. He is imprisoned because of the mystery. “The mystery” is the key to everything, concealed for a time but now revealed. The union of Jews and Gentiles was veiled in the Old Testament, now everyone…
Cur Deus Homo is typically viewed as the classic statement of the “satisfaction” theory of atonement. I think the accent of Anselm’s argument lies elsewhere. To be sure, satisfactio is a central term and satisfaction a central concept in the treatise. Anselm seems to use the term in much the…
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