Proverbs 2:2–6, Romans 12:1–2, Isaiah 1:18, Daniel 1:17–20, Matthew 22:37, Psalm 119:97–100
At a Christian high school, a theology teacher strode to the front of the classroom, where he drew a heart on one side of the blackboard and a brain on the other. The two are as divided as the two sid...
If we accept Genesis 1 as ancient cosmology, then we need to interpret it as ancient cosmology rather than translate it into modern cosmology. If we try to turn it into modern cosmology, we are making...
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...
Genesis 18:10-14 , Isaiah 7:14 , Exodus 4:1-5, Psalm 139:13-16 , Luke 1:26-38, John 20:24-29, Matthew 1:22-25
To a twentieth-century mind the notion of a virgin birth is intrinsically and preposterously inconceivable. If a woman claims–such claims are made from time to time–to have become pregnant without sex...
Exodus 3:7-10, Isaiah 58:6-10, Micah 6:6-8, Matthew 23:27-28 , James 1:26-27, Psalm 146:7-9
A major stumbling block for many earnest seekers is the compelling evidence throughout history that terrible things have been done in the name of religion. This applies to virtually all faiths at some...
Genesis 3:1-24, Isaiah 6:1-8, Genesis 50:15-21, John 8:1-11, Luke 15:11-32, Psalm 51:1-17
In Guilt and Grace , Swiss physician and Christian, Paul Tournier, writes… I cannot study this very serious problem of guilt with you without raising the very obvious and tragic fact that rel...
Ecclesiastes 7:10, Colossians 2:8, Matthew 9:17, 1 Thessalonians 5:21, Romans 12:2, Mark 7:8-9, Isaiah 43:19
It’s funny how sometimes members of the church can associate anything new with “heresy.” We often make the mistake of confusing technological innovations or scientific discoveries for changes to the g...
And I was reminded of an event from my father’s childhood: He was in a Sunday school class, listening to his teacher expound on Genesis 1 and a young earth, and asked his teacher how to make sense o...
From a historical perspective it is atheism that was old and the Christian faith and its good news that burst on the world as new. Once commonly called “atomism,” the genealogy of atheism can be trace...
Isaiah 53:3–5, Daniel 3:16–18, Micah 6:6–8, Matthew 23:23–24, Luke 4:16–30, Psalm 2:1
Jesus, as always, gets caught in the middle—along with a good number of his followers. Many people in America today were brought up in strict Christian homes and churches of one sort or another. There...
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...
Galatians 6:9, John 3:8, Ecclesiastes 11:5, Isaiah 55:10-11, John 6:44
Writing about ministering to postmodern skeptics, Don Everts and Doug Schaupp share a helpful insight into the mystery of God's movement: The first lesson they have taught us about the path to f...
Thomas Aquinas, the famous medieval theologian, created one of the greatest intellectual achievements of Western civilization in his Summa Theologica. It’s a massive work: thirty-eight treatises, thre...
The United States retains a basic respect for religion though it may be following European trends: surveys show a steady rise in the “nones” (now one-third of those under the age of thirty), that is, ...
My faith life, like that of every one else, fluctuates. There are ups and downs and hot spots and cold spots and boredom and ennui and all the rest can be there. And so I’m not asked on a Sunday morni...
My friend Mike Metzger of the Clapham Institute once used the following example to demonstrate how important frames are if we are to make sense of reality’s puzzle. This may seem like a head scratcher...
We know the Incarnation mysteriously unites all of humankind to God and one another, but so often the lines of Christianity feel like they do nothing but divide us.
Faith is the centerpiece of a connected life. It allows us to live by the grace of invisible strands. It is a belief in a wisdom superior to our own. Faith becomes a teacher in the absence of fact.
When the Reformers broke with Rome and claimed the view that the Bible was to be the supreme authority of the church (sola Scriptura), they were very careful to define basic principles of interpretati...
To some God and Jesus may appeal in a way other than to us: some may come to faith in God and to love, without a conscious attachment to Jesus. Both Nature and good men besides Jesus may lead us to Go...
Mark 7:1-23, Mark 7:1-12, Isaiah 29:13, Exodus 12:6-20, Deuteronomy 6:20-25, Joshua 4:1-9
Context Ritual Purity The most important broad contextual issue to address with this passage is the concept of ritual purity, and the ways in which this served as a boundary and identity marker for ...
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...
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23, Mark 7:11-12, Isaiah 29:13, Exodus 12:6-20, Deuteronomy 6:20-25, Joshua 4:1-9
Context Ritual Purity The most important broad contextual issue to address with this passage is the concept of ritual purity, and the ways in which this served as a boundary and identity marker for ...
Micah 6:8, Colossians 3:2, Isaiah 58:10, John 6:27, James 2:15-17, Matthew 6:33
In his excellent little book, A Testament of Devotion , written almost a hundred years ago, Thomas Kelly describes the tension that all ministries must live in; the focus on this world or the wor...