Judaism

If I could preach only one sermon, I would preach my one allotted message to the visible church. I would preach with the weighty concern that the baptized are on an irreversible course toward eternity. And the baptized, those well-ordered around the outward expressions of the covenant, are most...

In his book “Christianity at the Crossroads” Michael Kruger discusses the development of the church in the second century. During this time there were many alternative Christianities, or heresies that arose. This really should not surprise us. In the New Testament there are a number of warnings...

In Genesis 1, humanity is created and introduced to us as ‘made in the image of God.’ The description of humanity in Genesis 1 is foundational for the Christian worldview. The moral and ethical implications abound from the single statement than humanity is made in God’s image. In this brief post,...

Who is Jesus? Any Christian might easily answer this question by reaching for her Bible and turning to the gospels. But advocates of the New Perspective on Paul (NPP) would be quick to caution against such a naïve response. “Oh,” they might say, “you can know something about Jesus from reading the...

Since the 1980s, a movement called the New Perspective on Paul has been a rising star in Biblical studies and Pauline scholarship. The movement primarily started through the writings of E.P. Sanders’ 1977 Paul and Palestinian Judaism as he explored the Second Temple Jewish texts and reexamined what...

Exuberant over an experience, an oh-so-sweet manifestation of divine providence, you delightedly seek to give God praise in telling your story. “It was such a ‘God thing’,” you proclaim. As you see it, God wove together an otherwise inexplicable combination of events to deliver a wonderful—even...