Category: Theology and Practice

The Ministry of Salt

There Israel encamped before the mountain, 3 while Moses went up to God. The Lord called to him out of the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: 4 ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to...

/ March 24, 2023

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,...

/ March 16, 2023
francis-schaeffer

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...

/ March 13, 2023

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...

/ March 3, 2023

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...

/ February 20, 2023

Descent

At the beginning of The Divine Comedy, in Canto I of Inferno, Dante opens with these famous lines:

/ February 17, 2023

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...

/ February 15, 2023

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....

/ February 13, 2023

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...

/ February 6, 2023