The Wall
It is mildly amusing that a phrase so innocuous as ‘the wall’ should literally reverberate around the world, provoking reaction from every quarter. But don’t panic, it is not my intention to pass comment on the particular structure in the…
Tag Scripture
Incomprehensible but Knowable: Human Knowing
The Bible teaches that God is incomprehensible. God is so far above us as the supreme being and only infinite being that we as finite creatures are never going to be able to know and understand all that there is…
Sarah Miller and Her Secret Turmoil
When Samuel Miller married Sarah Sergeant, he didn’t know the extent of her pain. Emotional anguish and religious skepticism were not a proper topic of discussion. At least, that’s what her mother had taught her. She had told her…
Commentary Connoisseur: The Welsh & English
I don’t know if I have an absolute favorite commentary on Romans…at least not yet. I remember when serving as a youth pastor I spent about two years working through the book of Romans with all the high school students…
Hell: How Long?
As I headed to the office to write this article, I tuned my radio to NPR, to one of my favorite programs: “1A, with Host Joshua Johnson.” He is an excellent conversational journalist who really knows how to get at…
Hell: They Have No Bowels
While rereading Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol I recently read something I had forgotten. When Jacob Marley appeared to Scrooge his body was transparent, so that Scrooge could see not only the front of his long deceased partner’s waistcoat but…
Hell: What Sort of Place?
It’s become somewhat fashionable to say that hell is a state of mind rather than a physical location. Far more people in modern America will proclaim their belief in heaven than admit hell exists. Even so, they must both exist…
Word, Sacrament, and Discipline: Preaching
During the time of the Protestant Reformation, the Reformers came to the conclusion, in the face of defection and departure from biblical orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and doxology within the medieval Roman Catholic Church, that there needed to be a means whereby…
Word, Sacrament, and Discipline: The Offices of Christ
All that the church is can be found in her union with Christ. As John Calvin has so memorably put it, “we must remember that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him,…
Ralph Erskine and His Songs of the Bridegroom
Ralph Erskine (1685-1752) was born ten years after his mother Margaret was pronounced dead. The pronouncement had been mistaken, but she would have indeed been dead if a greedy sexton had not laid his eyes on her precious ring.…