Essays
“It's official: Truth is dead. Facts are passe.” So declared The Washington Post back in 2016 when they reported on Oxford Dictionary’s decision to select for their international word of the year: “post-truth.” The official definition reads: relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. [...]
Classic Protestants are intrinsically ambivalent about human nature and thus human culture. On one side, we’re haunted by historical shadows. We’re disturbed by the specter of Constantinianism, since both Scripture and history bear witness to the pitfalls of wedding faith with political culture; we’re sensitive to [...]
I have a love/hate relationship with poetry. My appreciation for the literary form swings on a pendulum between “Is there anything more beautiful than the crafting of words?” and “What in the world does this even mean and why did I waste my time reading it?” This is not necessarily due to a deficiency on the part of the poet [...]
The great Christian hope is that we will see God. Jesus assured us that “blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). In this age, “we walk by faith, not by sight,” suggesting that sight is the better experience (2 Cor. 5:7–8). Waiting on this side of Christ’s return [...]
In 1556, Jean de Léry sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, the “abyss of water that is the Western Sea.” When he saw giant porpoises, sea turtles, and flying fish—just a few of the marvels and terrors he witnessed—he remembered Psalm 104:25–26: “The sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number—living things both large and small. [...]
The eleventh chapter of Hebrews is undoubtedly one of the most famous passages in the entire New Testament. Affectionately called “The Hall of Faith,” this text has endured as one of the most celebrated chapters in this entire letter. [...]
“Lord, don’t you care?!” The Gospels record two occasions when some of Jesus’ closest disciples posed that question to him (Mark 4:38; Luke 10:40). In the book of Job and in the Psalms, others pose the same question to the Lord many times and in different ways. How about you? [...]
You Are What You Believe: How the Creed Defines Our Identity in Relation to God, Ourselves, and Others
Ancient Christian confessions like the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed define the boundaries and content of the Christian faith in accordance with Scripture. But they also function as essential identity formation. These creeds are much more than checklists of personal beliefs [...]
From the smallest insect to the greatest monster of the deep, from the weakest child to the mightiest of men, no creature can exist without God’s word, and without God’s word there is no life and salvation. God’s word does what it says [...]
Our world today is marked by something so obvious we miss just how peculiar it is: the existence of another world that is both “in and not of” our physical world. Not because the other world is purely spiritual; I’m speaking about the existence of the digital realm. [...]
In the late 1590s, before he became chaplain to King James, a translator of the Authorized Version, a British delegate to the Synod of Dordt, or Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, Samuel Ward was a twenty-something student at Christ College [...]
I recently spoke with a younger friend who is battling cancer, which has included a great deal of pain. We had not spoken for a while, and I was struck by the change in his voice when he answered the phone [...]
Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways. Yet it is never viewed with indifference: beauty demands to be noticed [...]
As we look around at the general troubles of the world and at the specific trials we face in our own contexts—ravaging wars, ethnic strife, poverty, pandemic, and persecution—we may wonder if God is really reigning [...]
Part question, part protest, the plaintive cry “Are we there yet?” punctuates any family vacation worth talking about. Clearly, we’re not where we were, but we also haven’t arrived [...]
