A friend of mine, lecturing in a theological college in Kenya, introduced his students to “The Quest for the Historical Jesus.” This, he said, was a movement of thought and scholarship that in its ear...
Psalm 23:1-4, John 10:11-18, Luke 19:1-10, Luke 15:11-32, Ephesians 3:17-19, 1 John 4:10-11, Romans 8:38-39
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...
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...
It is clear that this essential Christian doctrine gives a new value to human nature, to human history and to human life which is not to be found in the other great oriental religions.
"Just Believe..." “It doesn’t matter what you believe, just as long as you believe something.” That’s the sentiment once expressed by President Dwight Eisenhower. America would be stro...
Colossians 3:23-24, Galatians 6:9-10, Philippians 2:4, Matthew 5:16, Proverbs 31:8-9, James 1:27
Brandon and Faith Lee, who started Bird and Branch Coffee, are what faithful witnesses look like. When they sat down across from my wife and me, they had a dream to start a coffee shop that would serv...
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...
Have you heard the acronym “K. I. S. S”? It stands for “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” Paul doesn’t exactly call the Corinthians stupid (in 1 Cor. 15), though elsewhere Paul sounds tempted to do so, when ...
Luke 19:40, Isaiah 55:12, Job 12:7-10, Habakkuk 2:11, Psalm 96:11-12
Lord, there is no seedling in the thicket that does not call you its maker. And I, too, come knowing that whatever the quality of my life is, it is thou, O God, who stamped your purpose on my soul. So...
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 ...
What you do in the present by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neig...
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...
This concept [the parish system] has helped Christians understand how interconnected all the pieces within a community are and the importance of pursuing the common good there. Jesus’ call to be peace...
What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us…. Where we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the questions… we might predict with certainty the s...
A conversation in 1784 between Charles Simeon (a Calvinist and believer in unconditional predestination) and John Wesley (a follower of Arminius, who denied unconditional predestination) can help us u...
Theology is practical, especially now... If you do not listen to Theology that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have a lot of wrong ones - bad, muddled, out-of-dat...
Of the medieval church’s many intellectual leaders, none has had more influence than the philosophical theologian Thomas Aquinas. He was born to a noble family near Naples, Italy, and joined the Domin...
I love watching young boys and girls build things with Legos. Their small, creative masterpieces cannot help but reflect their image-bearing nature and remind us we were all made to make things. When ...
In his extremely helpful book, The Economics of Neighborly Love , Tom Nelson argues that the church has an important part to play in helping Christians understand the value and place of economics i...
A Theological Giant's Final Word Walter Brueggemann’s passing on June 5, 2025 leaves a void in biblical scholarship that will last a very long time. He was still writing books and essays at age 9...
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...
Psalm 19:1-6, Romans 1:20, Acts 17:26-28, Matthew 18:3, Proverbs 22:6, Luke 10:21
Sofia Cavalletti is a researcher who has pioneered the study of spirituality in young children. She finds that children often have an amazing perception that far surpasses what they’ve already been ta...
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...
Introduction During my time in seminary (and the year after I graduated) I spent a lot of time at a church in southern New Jersey. It’s actually how I met Scott Bullock, TPW board member and creator...
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart,” said the apostle Paul, “as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” (Colossians 3:23) ...[H]ow you do anything is how you’ll do everything. Dr. ...
Jeremiah 23:23-24, 1 Kings 8:27, Matthew 28:20, John 15:4-5, 2 Corinthians 6:16
A presence by knowledge is to be granted, but to say such a presence fills a place is an improper speech: knowledge is not enough to constitute a presence. A man in London knows there is such a city a...
May God bless you with the ability to recognize that the world is not yours to save. May the Spirit awaken you to the beautiful truth that you have a part to play. May your eyes see resurrection in ...
Matthew 3:1-12, Deuteronomy 8:2-3, Revelation 12:6, Job 12:7-10, Isaiah 35:1
Before I knew God, I knew nature. I knew the feeling of warmth from the sun on my skin. The crunch of leaves on the sidewalk. The sparkle of the fresh powder snow. It was not until I was a teenager th...