Category: Bible
“Are You Alone Wise?”: Luther’s Answers for Today’s Protestants
A decade after he began advocating for reform, Martin Luther had become highly attuned to the fundamental issues at stake in the debates with his adversaries. Having made Sola Scriptura his rallying cry, he was forced to face the chaos...
Jesus, Laughter, and the Bright Side of Life
I recall, 20 or so years ago, how stunned I was when I first saw the conclusion of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. A clever film which is ultimately more about people than anything else, it tells the story of...
The Seed of Woman: Mary Among the Protestants
By Matthew Y. Emerson and R. Lucas Stamps One of our favorite images that circulates on social media during Advent depicts Eve and Mary both gazing at Mary’s swollen abdomen, a belly pregnant with the Life of the World, Jesus....
The Danger of Neglecting the Old Testament
By Joshua Heavin “How I love your torah, O Lord!” (Psalm 119:97) Love for torah is always fittingly strange by the grace of God. But I am concerned that literacy of and love for the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament...
Patience and Hermeneutics: On Brian Zahnd, Marcion, and Origen
I’m pleased to publish this guest essay from Dr. Mark Randall James. Brian Zahnd’s new book, Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God, has invited comparison with one of the greatest of early heretics, Marcion. In a long and...
Paul and the Slave Girl: Racism and the Great Gospel Narrative
I’m pleased to publish this guest feature from Joseph Torres. It’s impossible to be a culturally aware Christian and not be sensitive to the high tension environment in which we live. Just last week, a protest was held in Charlottesville,...
A Truth Above All Contexts: Daniel Kirk, Whiteness, and the Theological Interpretation of Scripture
I’m pleased to publish what is a predictably comprehensive critique by Alastair Roberts of some recent work written by Daniel Kirk, who has become one of the main intellectual leaders of the post-evangelical left. The Revisionism of the Theological Interpretation...
The Battle for the Bible and a “Literal” Hermeneutic
According to a piece recently published in the Los Angeles Review of Books evangelicals are losing the battle for the Bible—and they’re fine with that. In the review essay, author Jim Hinch quotes several recent books as well as an interview...
Sanctified by Grace Blog Tour: Election
One of the great problems facing the church today is how to cultivate a unified Christian mind on a corporate level in our churches and on an individual level in the lives of individual Christians. This challenge is, in one...
A Defense of “Biblical” Against Interpretative Nihilism.
The recent controversy surrounding Rachel Held Evans’ book has fortuitously coincided with some close rereading of Richard Hays’ Moral Vision of the New Testament, a work that is simultaneously awe-inspiring for its scope and frustrating for its ambiguity. The question it pursues...