Essay / Theology
To interpret the Bible correctly, one of the skills you need to develop is the ability to discern the voices of God the Father and God the Son, speaking about each other and to each other, in the words of the Old Testament. Without this skill,
Essay / Theology
The eminent philosopher Bertram Wilberforce Wooster once wrote, I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don’t you know, if you see what I mean. And how right he
Essay / Theology
That in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; [even] in him: ~Ephesians 1:10 The “mystery” or revealed secret in this case is the Gospel,
Essay / Blog
The Catholic apologist and Bible translator, Ronald Knox, captured the heart of G.K. Chesterton and his importance when he observed that Chesterton “had the artist’s eye which could suddenly see in some quite familiar object a new value; he had the poet’s intuition which could
Essay / Theology
Courtesy of Open Biola, here is video of a lecture I gave in December 2013 for students at the Torrey Honors Institute. The title of the one-hour lecture is “The Theology of First John,” and while that accurately captures the main task, the lecture also
Essay / Theology
Should a Christian pray for a longer life on earth? Never mind admitting that that’s what you want; the question is whether you have any grounds for asking God to give you more years of this life. In 1869, Methodist theologian William Burt Pope published
Essay / Theology
At a recent panel discussion (ETS 2013 in Baltimore), I was asked to say a few things about John Wesley’s view of the origin of evil. The first thing I wanted to say is that Wesley thought of the origin of evil as a classical
Essay / Art
There’s a little song called God Went Bowling by a band called the Swirling Eddies. It was on their 1994 album Zoom Daddy, and it features an oompah beat driven by accordion. Over it all is the snide vocal of Terry Scott Taylor, the songwriter
Essay / Theology
I can’t take the time to give proper commentary on these images, but I just rooted around on the web for pictures of the sacrifices of Cain and Abel, because I wanted to see how various artists interpreted the offerings. The story in Genesis is
Essay / Theology
The church of St. Servatius in Siegburg, Germany has a treasure room full of medieval art and relics. Among the artifacts is a portable altar crafted around the year 1160 by the workshop of Eilbertus of Cologne. Eilbertus was a master craftsman of Romanesque metalwork
Essay / Blog
We are all past, present, and future. While our lives may be bound in the present, what constitutes our “who” has come before, and will be. I am myself, my mother’s child, my child’s mother. The intricacy and interdependency of human lives and human relationships
Essay / Theology
Around 1935, Karl Barth developed a style of speaking and writing that cut through a lot of atmospheric confusion and obfuscation. He found this new tone of voice for two reasons: first, it was 1935, and the crisis in Germany was becoming impossible for the world