Category: Theology and Practice
The Death and Immortality of Mortal Men in “The Lord of the Rings”
In a letter addressed to Dr. Rhona Beare, on October 14th, 1958, J.R.R. Tolkien states that The Lord of the Rings, “is mainly concerned with Death, and Immortality.”[1] He also notes in a letter to Robert Burchfield on December 2nd,...
The PR Style in Christian Media
By now the discourse surrounding Joshua Ryan Butler’s book excerpt published at the Gospel Coalition has in some ways exhausted itself. To be sure, Butler’s intentions for the text—to highlight and commend the beauty of the Christian sex ethic—is fairly...
Cultural Engagement After the World’s End
Evangelical discourse about cultural engagement betrays a dichotomy that was never meant to be. As we bicker and quarrel about what the priority of the Church should be—are we to make disciples or transform culture?—we bifurcate the tension at the...
Deconversion and the Cross
What has God promised us about our lives, in the here and now? One of the earliest works of Christian theology is Origen of Alexandria’s On First Principles; a case can be made that it is our oldest, extant text...
Descent
At the beginning of The Divine Comedy, in Canto I of Inferno, Dante opens with these famous lines:
Rules for (Theological) Retrieval
I’ve always been intrigued by archaeology. The expectant digging, the gentle sweeping away of silt and debris, unearthing bones and artifacts hidden for millennia; it’s all endlessly fascinating. A thing lost and long forgotten to humankind suddenly reappears enclosed in...
Toward a Renewed Public Protestantism: The Beginnings of a Manifesto
In his book Bad Religion, Ross Douthat suggests that the 1950s were the high water mark for Christianity in America. Amongst other things, church attendance was at its peak and each of America’s four defining ecclesial traditions were relatively strong....
The Case for Pew Bibles
Do pew Bibles matter? Churches of all styles have had to ask this question in recent years. The increase of church plants using secular spaces for worship means that church planters must contemplate the extra weight, hassle, and expense of...
Epiphany: How an Enchanted World Drew Outsiders to God
A number of years ago, a wise parent shared with me an insight for which I have been repeatedly grateful: One reason God gives us children is so that we adults can [re]discover nature. This has proven true on numerous...
The Reality of Fear and the Presence of Reality: Suffering and Cultural Renewal
These are the remarks I gave as part of my plenary lecture at this year’s Eighth Day Institute Symposium in Wichita, KS. You can learn more about EDI’s work and sign up to support them as a member by visiting...