Category: Misc.

In Colossians 1:10, Paul prays that the Colossians would be able to “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him.” In its original Greek, it’s a a rougher sentence, reading something like this: “to walk worthy of the Lord in all pleasing.” Most responsible translations do something to smooth that out,…

It is obvious that the beginning of the semester is just around the corner. I am seeing freshmen excitedly wandering the halls with bewildered looks on their faces. They are looking forward to the new experiences that await them here at the university. Their sense of expectation is almost palpable. This time of year being…

Some things are worth thinking about, and some things just aren’t. Some subjects repay closer examination, and the longer you spend meditating on them, the more they reveal their own richness and unfold their conceptual complexity. Other things have the opposite effect: the more time and effort you put into pondering them, the more you…

The redoubtable Dustin Steeve linked recently to a Christianity Today review of the book Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman’s Soul, by John and Stasi Eldredge. The reviewer, Agnieszka Tennant, doesn’t recognize herself in the descriptions of woman offered by this book, decked out in “pop psychology, sentimentality, eisegesis, and clichés borrowed from Harlequin…

Paul’s prayer for the church at Colossae (Colossians 1:9-14) is a catalog of the blessings he wants God to give them: knowledge, spiritual wisdom, understanding, a worthy walk, eagerness to please God, fruitfulness, growth in knowledge, strength, endurance, patience, and joy. With all of that going on in the prayer, I still think it’s safe…

I am concerned about the nature of our modern academic institutions and the confidence that we put in them. I am convinced that intellectual pursuits are a fundamental aspect of our whole Christian soul. If the ideas of Christianity are necessary for a proper understanding of reality how is it that we have allowed our…

In Colossians 1:6, Paul mentions “The word of truth, the Gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing — as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth.” The most important thing happening in…

In Colossians 1:4-5, Paul says that whenever he prays for the church in Colossae, he thanks God because of their faith in Christ, their love for the saints, and the hope laid up for them in heaven. Faith, hope, and love. That triad sounds familiar because Paul uses it to conclude the famous “love chapter,”…

Bruce L. McCormack of Princeton Seminary is a serious theologian. He’s not messing around, trying things out, or riding hobby horses; he’s reading and writing Christian theology as if it matters, as if something depends on it. In an article in the new issue of the International Journal of Systematic Theology (“Karl Barth’s Christology as…

The whole Middlebrow team has stayed busy this summer working with Wheatstone Academy, a ministry which runs week-long summer conferences to equip young people to take a full-grown Christian faith and worldview to college with them. Starting Sunday, we’ll be leading the final conference of the summer. At this conference, faculty and students will spend…

Before he gives his testimony of conversion to Christ, Nabeel Qureshi makes it clear that he was perfectly satisfied with Islam as he experienced it. He tells about his upbringing in a devout, peaceful, and intellectual Muslim family, where he was a role model for other Muslim children because he had read the Qur’an in…

Of all the tiny fragments of Old Testament vocabulary to have washed up on the shore of secular culture, one of the oddest is the old bit about “knowing in the biblical sense.” People who don’t know or care to know (in any sense, biblical or otherwise) about anything from the Old Testament somehow got…