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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...

Wrong ideas about God make it impossible for us to function in relationship with one another.

Karl Barth arguably was the greatest theologian of the twentieth century. His twelve-volume Church Dogmatics, alone, consists of over ten thousand pages of systematic theology. Toward the end of his l...

The doctrine of the Trinity means that relationship, that fellowship, that togetherness and sharing, that self-giving and other-centeredness are not afterthoughts with God, but the deepest truth about...

In the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, we find another resource for hospitality. The trinity shows God in relationships with Himself. Our Three-in-one God has welcomed us into Himself and invited u...

There is no mere world or matters of fact for covenant theology; there is always the wonder and duty to the concrete moment at hand, where God’s illimitable gift of life is given into our hands – to h...

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...

There’s a somewhat naïve belief among some that, in general, most people are inherently good. While many Christians may not fully embrace John Calvin’s doctrine of total depravity (which I believe is ...

The world says: "You have needs — satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This ...

On this interpretation of the work of Christ (sc. the Pauline doctrine of reconciliation) the whole Church rests. If you move faith from that centre, you have driven the nail into the Church’s coffin....

I witnessed a ritual sacrifice in the middle of a cool, third-wave coffee shop the other day. It’s the sort of place that attracts herds of bearded hipsters and where they brew your coffee by hand, on...

In her book Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home , Jen Pollock Michel reflects on the nature of home in a transient age. In this short excerpt, Michel reflects on the Biblical doctrine...

Identities—what makes us who we are, the kind of people we are—is what we love. More specifically, our identity is shaped by what we ultimately love or what we love as ultimate—what, at the end of the...

Did you know that apartheid in South Africa was based in large part on theological doctrines that were formed at Stellenbosch University in the 1930s and 1940s? Isn’t that chilling? Many of the intell...

Several years ago I was conducting a seminar in the interpretation of Scripture in a theological seminary…Our topic that day was Jesus’ parables…One of the priests, Tony Byrnne, was a Jesuit missionar...

Think of an ancient icon of Christ. Imagine that a thousand-year-old Christ Pantocrator painted on a wooden panel is discovered in some forgotten monastery. The image of Christ is there, but it’s cove...

American Christianity is a story of perpetual upheavals in churches and individual lives. Starting with the extraordinary conversion experience, our lives are motivated by a constant expectation for t...

The New Testament makes it clear that the early Church’s message always …had two aspects—one theological, the other ethical: (i) the Gospel which the apostles preached; and (ii) the Commandment, growi...

Hold firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church.

Religion says, "I obey; therefore I am accepted." Christianity says, "I’m accepted, therefore I obey."

This is salvation in the deeper and more spiritual sense of the Old Testament. . . . But even in the religion of the Law, . . . obedience to the revealed will of Yahweh is recognized as the supreme en...

Lord, all your treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ. You reveal them to us through words spoken in his name. May we understand and obey.

A theology which asserts that only the organized Church should be involved in mission, that theology has a very serious quarrel with history.

Obedience to God's will is the secret of spiritual knowledge and insight. It is not willingness to know, but willingness to DO (obey) God's will that brings certainty.

We can’t separate what we believe in the political arena from who we are in Christ and what obedience to God demands...That said, not every tenet of Christianity should become the law of the state. We...

We must never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God, whether in prose or in poetry. A generous orthodoxy, in contrast to the tense, na...

Our modern theology, which in many ways has ceased to be personal, i.e. centered on the Christian experience of "person," nevertheless - and maybe as a result of this - has become utterly in...

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...

Dallas Willard gave a series of lectures on the kingdom of God. In one, he discussed the popularity of the phrase, “The truth will set you free” by putting it in its proper kingdom context: The whole...

[The decay of Logic results from an] untroubled assumption that the particular is real and the universal is not.