hebrews on Reason/Rationality

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

We confess, “I believe in God.” That confession is not an expression of a creative imagination or an instance of projection, but a response to the One who manifests himself in creation, in history, in...

I do not put much stock in "believing in God." The grammar of "belief" invites a far too rationalistic account of what it means to be a Christian. "Belief" implies propos...

If I were making a list of benefits like the one Mike McKinley imagines, only this time using the devil’s actual logic, it might look more like this: Experience the excitement of new romance. Get th...

Belief doesn’t create truth. Unbelief doesn’t destroy truth. Christian faith goes beyond reason but not against reason.

In the Middle Ages there were theologians who wrote volumes on proofs of God. Anselm (1033–1109) came up with the ontological proof of God that there exists in our minds an idea of a being than which ...

What we need to realize, however, is that there is no such thing as autonomous or “self-grounding” knowledge. All systems of interpretation and all claims to true knowledge are ultimately grounded out...

[I]f we chose to project the human figure forward out of an unhuman world, we could only say that one of the animals had obviously gone mad.

For although faith alone justifies, love is also demanded…. A living faith is that efficacious, burning trust in the mercy of God which never fails to bring forth good fruits.

Fear and growth go together like macaroni and cheese. It’s a package deal. The decision to grow always involves a choice between risk and comfort. This means that to be a follower of Jesus you must re...

Man is pushed by drives. But he is pulled by values.

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Ancient Lens What's the historical context? An Honest Inquiry from the Religious Leaders It is easy—perhaps tempting—to read this passage with built-in sarcasm because we know the general ton...

In the book of Hebrews (and elsewhere in the New Testament and theology, generally), the Greek and Jewish worlds collide. A funny parallel may be drawn between this and George's complete meltdown ...

We fixate on sins of commission far too much. We practice holiness by subtraction-don't do this, don't do that, and you're okay. The problem with that is this: you can do nothing wrong and...

The man of pseudo-faith will fight for his verbal creed but refuse flatly to allow himself to get in a predicament where his future must depend upon that creed being true. He always provides himself w...

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

A 2014 study by Wendy Wood found that approximately 40% of people’s daily activities are performed out of habit. According to Wood, “an important characteristic of a habit is that it’s automatic…We fi...

We are invariably made for faith, to operate out of a need to trust something we cannot control.

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Context to the Letter While we don’t have a robust understanding of the context of Hebrews compared to, for example, many of Paul’s let...

Unbelief in the Wilderness The author of Hebrews concludes chapter 3 with the history of Israel’s unbelief in the wilderness which kept the unfaithful among them from entering into the rest of His pr...

Faith according to our Lord’s teaching in this paragraph is primarily thinking; and the whole trouble with a man of little faith is that he does not think. He allows circumstances to bludgeon him. . ....

Scientist John Haldane once proposed to the English priest Ronald Knox that, given the vast number of planets in the universe, the emergence of life by sheer chance was inevitable. Knox responded with...

My thought it is a wanton ranger,  It skips away;  I fear 'twill bring my soul in danger  On Judgment Day...

I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do.

Unless there is an element of risk in our exploits for God, there is no need for faith.

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong as long as you are merely using i...

We are what we believe we are.

Introduction, 1:1-4 While Hebrews is an anonymous letter, it is interesting to note that the KJV’s first verse is, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers ...

An Incomplete Trinity? Protestant churches who lean evangelical but not charismatic have occasionally been accused of being more “binitarian” than “trinitarian.”  The suggestion is that such churches...