Resources from 2025
Nietzsche's ideas and his influence on modern secular culture have come under lots of well-deserved criticism from Christians, especially his contribution to our flattened, fractured notion of the self and our contemporary obsession with attempting to invent our own identity and meaning. [...]
"God may pity me, but he could never understand me." Don't we often feel that way, especially when confronted with the darkest parts of the human heart—both in ourselves and others? In this moving and pastorally rich opening presentation [...]
On June 13, 1525, one of the most significant weddings in history took place. Admittedly, it was not as significant as that of Adam and Eve or Joseph and Mary, but it certainly outranked most royal weddings. The guest list was small, and the venue left much to be desired [...]
Joseph of Nazareth, the adoptive father of Jesus, is neglected in theology and biblical studies, but we come by it honestly. His obscurity in the tradition is more or less proportional to his obscurity in Scripture. There, he speaks not a word [...]
In the city of Datong, in Shanxi province in China, archeologists are excavating some six hundred tombs, several of which date back to the Northern Wei period (386 to 534 C.E.). In one of these ancient resting places, a man and woman lie entwined. [...]
Gone are the remnants of the supposed cave that once entombed Christ for three days. One cannot imagine that there once stood a slope over the place where now a shrine stands, encircled during the visiting hours by pilgrims [...]
Children today seem to be caught in the middle of an impossible identity crisis. It’s a maelstrom in which they are simultaneously elevated as paragons of individual invention through mechanisms like gender ideology, yet absolved of personal moral responsibility for their choices. [...]
One of the benefits of the past ca. 75 years in Calvin studies has been the move beyond his Institutes of the Christian Religion to the reading of other portions of his corpus, which has provided a deeper understanding of his life and thought. This is true in particular of our understanding of Calvin on prayer. [...]
Several years ago, a young pastor stepped into the pulpit of a small, vibrant church. His heart was full of zeal for ministry, and his love for the congregation was obvious. But over time, subtle shifts began to take place. His sermons, once filled with Scripture [...]
Few Christians today doubt that our relationship to our civil governments has gotten at least more complicated, if not outright harder, in recent years. Still, we often do not know how to navigate that challenge very effectively. We can be left thinking that we simply [...]
The Roman Catholic church has been in the news a lot lately, most recently with the death of Pope Francis and the election of a new pontiff, Leo XIV. Leo XIV, formerly Robert Prevost, a cardinal originally from Chicago, is the first American pope and the first who belongs to the Augustinian order. [...]
I was drawn to this book by its subtitle, “Martin Luther’s View of Reality”—it might be because of my interests in the human mind, or simply because achieving a correct perception of reality seems particularly challenging in today’s culture. [...]
As you might’ve guessed, I’m not a mother. But I have known many over the years through my local church and my family—and then there was a rather unusual stretch of time where I worked for a pretty popular live chat service [...]
I doubt there will be a sudden run on “What Would Mary Do?” bracelets after this essay is published, but I’m going to make the claim anyway: The Mother of our Lord is a wonderful yet far too often underappreciated model of discipleship among today’s heirs of the Reformation. [...]
A few years ago, my friend Marieke Ude, Counselor at John Calvin Secondary School in Oswanka, Nigeria, encouraged me to write a children’s book about Byang Henry Kato (1936–1975). It didn’t take long for Kato to become one of my favorite theologians. [...]
