As debates over critical race theory rage on, both in society and within the church, one important point seems to have been missed by all sides: Many of the most important biblical writers were among the sharpest critical theorists of their day. I may be naive to imagine that an appreciation of the . . . . Continue Reading »
Music is a divine balm in the midst of the world’s sorrows. Music is also a sorrow in search of a balm. It offers a sui generis grace, one that we may wish to approach carefully. Most of us understand the two sides of music’s power intuitively. Balm in the midst of sorrow is what we love. . . . . Continue Reading »
It is the presence of grace in Cormac McCarthy's dark stories that made him truly peerless. Continue Reading »
When you’re a linguist, you get used to being asked how many languages you speak. But a few years ago I was asked for the first time, by a student at Phillips Exeter Academy, what my favorite words are. “Grace and serendipity,” I blurted out—not a graceful response, but a . . . . Continue Reading »
Richard Mouw, for twenty years president of Fuller Seminary and still on its faculty, updates us on his thinking about a matter long close to his heart: the disputed neo-Calvinist or Kuyperian doctrine of common grace. Conversational and personal in style, the book has hardly a paragraph without . . . . Continue Reading »
Existence is ambiguous not because we have failed to define its proper parameters, but because it isn’t ours to grasp in the first place. Continue Reading »
Then, for three years, I traveled wherever Grace traveled. Wherever she went, I went, and after she prayed for my husband in Tarrytown, he wanted to go with me, for reasons I assumed were the same as mine. For three years her ministry was our church, and Ross came, too, and read some during the . . . . Continue Reading »
Marilynne Robinson's Gilead should be read as a summa pietatis rather than a summa theologiae. Continue Reading »
On a hazy afternoon in late May 1986, I wait, as I wait every weekday afternoon in a parking lot in Branford, Connecticut, for my son to be dismissed from school. While I wait, I listen to Ceci, another mother new to the school, whose son is in my son’s class. She is telling me about her car. From . . . . Continue Reading »
If the whole world, including our Protestant brethren, accepted divorce—which they have—yet should the Church stand contra mundum. Continue Reading »
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