What do Derek Jeter, Tim Tebow, Lebron James, and Sidney Crosby have in common? Is each the premier player in their respective sport? No. Are they the highest paid individuals in each league? No. Do they all have the same level of experience, or have they won identical rewards in each of their respective leagues (i.e. each is an MVP’er, responsible for producing the highest offensive tallies for their sport in a single year, etc)? Not […]
Withstanding the apostles and Jesus himself, Saint Aurelius Augustine is arguably the greatest Christian theologian of the first millennium. His contributions to the understanding and development of Bible interpretation are incalculable. He was a man ahead of his time. Indeed many of the current debates on hermeneutics and postmodern literary criticism appeal to Augustine for insight on issues of meaning, role-of reader, and semiotics. Augustine’s hermeneutical reputation is often limited to his allegorical exegesis, yet […]
[Update (2/14/2014)—My new book Esther and Her Elusive God: How A Secular Story Functions As Scripture is now available. My posts on this site represent stages in the development of my thinking about Esther. For the full argument check out the book]. The Book of Esther is notoriously difficult. For many Christians this might seem like an odd statement. Setting aside the historical issues surrounding the story, the main difficulty is discerning the theological message. It is […]
The more I read Hebrews, the more I am convinced that Auctor wanted his readers to see themselves as members with OT Israel in their wilderness journeys. I often wonder why Hebrews includes discussion about angels, Moses, the high priest, sacrifices, the tabernacle, and other OT images; but lately I am beginning to think that we as believers are to see ourselves in the a new kind of wilderness, exiled without a home of our own. […]
A few weeks ago, I introduced an idea that natural law was meant to be the source from which all civil laws flowed. Thus, rather than appealing to biblical texts in order to erect judicial code, one must look to natural law. This post is my effort to establish natural law as the normative seat for the creation of civil law. While this may seem foreign to many, it was in fact the “orthodox” Reformed […]
What does Christmas joy look like? And if so, how do we obtain it? This month, I’ve noticed that a lot of my Christmas reflections have sought to explore the emotional and spiritual dissonance that the soul can fall prey to during Christmastide. Personally, I do believe that nostalgia is not all evil, and that the warmth it provides is a phenomena that God has wired us to experience. But, when we contemplate Christmas JOY, […]
Everyone knows how the Christmas story goes. As Stanley Hudson vehemently asserted in the most recent episode of The Office (8.10 Christmas Wishes) regarding the sensitivity to celebrate everything but Christmas during the Holidays: I want Christmas! Just give me plain-baby-Jesus-lying-in-a-manger Christmas! When our culture boils down the Christmas event it looks like this: baby Jesus in a manger. We’ve seen live nativity scenes and some of us have small-scale versions of it around our […]
In keeping with the Christmas spirit that has been permeated the blog, I thought I would attempt to meld my two-kingdom series with something relevant for the holiday season. In the secularized west, the constant debate about Christ’s relationship to Christmas provides a fantastic peek into the practicality of the two kingdom’s discussion. Today’s article takes us to a small Texas town in Henderson county called Athens. I ran across a most curious article about […]
Survey anyone within the church, and if they are honest, they will let you know that there is at least one approach or method for sharing the gospel that makes them cringe. It’s not that there isn’t excitement about the spreading of the news of Jesus and His redemptive work to redeem and restore mankind. It is the fact that, filtered through our own personalities, our own life experiences, and I might add, perhaps our […]
The concept is bizarre when you stop and think about it. Let’s take a couple of days off of work at one of the busiest times of the year. We’ll time our school calendars so that the semester break occurs during the holiday. For the month preceding the holiday, houses and storefronts will be decorated with fir trees, snowflakes, wreaths, lights, snowmen, reindeer, and a man in a red suit. We’ll write songs about it […]
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