The word sacrament also has a broader meaning. In the study of religion, a sacrament is commonly defined as a mediator of the sacred, a vehicle by which God becomes present, a means through which the...
Rather than God being the lawgiver and judge whose requirements must be met and whose justice must be satisfied, God is the lover who yearns to be in relationship to us. Rather than sin and guilt bein...
Participatory eschatology involves a twofold affirmation: we are to do it with God, and we cannot do it without God. In St. Augustine’s brilliant aphorism, God without us will not; we without God cann...
But prior to about the year 1600, the verb believe had a very different meaning within Christianity as well as in popular usage. It did not mean believing statements to be true; the object of the verb...
But Christian illiteracy is only the first part of the crisis. Even more seriously, even for those who think they speak Christian fluently, the faith itself is often misunderstood and distorted by man...
As an epiphany of God, Jesus discloses that at the center of everything is a reality that is in love with us and wills our well-being, both as individuals and as individuals within society. As an imag...
To affirm Jesus is the sacrifice for sin was to deny the temple’s claim to have a monopoly on forgiveness and access to God. It was an antitemple statement. Using the metaphor of sacrifice, it subvert...
The spirit of industrial society—a way of living organized around production and consumption.7 Our modern preoccupation with producing and consuming leads us to live on the surface level of reality an...
Recognize that labels risk becoming stereotypes and caricatures; indeed, the difference between label and libel is a single letter. Yet they can be useful and even necessary shorthand for naming diffe...
Metaphor means to see as. Metaphorical language is a way of seeing. To apply this to the Bible: the Bible not only includes metaphorical language and metaphorical narratives, but may itself be thought...
Thus Jesus is a metaphor of God. Indeed, for us as Christians, he is the metaphor of God. Of course, he was also a real person. As metaphor of God, Jesus discloses what God is like. We see God through...
This book might also be seen as a Christian primer. A primer teaches us how to read. Reading is not just about learning to recognize and pronounce words, but also about how to hear and understand them...
The Roman vision incarnated in the divine Augustus was peace through victory. The Christian vision incarnated in the divine Jesus was peace through justice. It is those alternatives that are at stake...
More than half described Christians as literalistic, anti-intellectual, judgmental, self-righteous, and bigoted.
Jesus was telling his contemporaries that the kingdom was indeed breaking into history, but that it did not look like what they had expected.
Its meanings include: The risen Christ journeys with us, is with us, whether we know it or not. Sometimes there are moments when we do recognize this.
In this life, a radical centering in God leads to a deepening trust that transforms the way we see and live our lives. Seeing, living, trusting, and centering are all related in complex ways. They are...
In particular, Jesus’ clash with the Pharisees came about not because he was an antinomian, or because he believed in justification by faith while they believed in justification by works, but because...
In its Lutheran form, despite the emphasis upon God’s grace, justification by grace through faith was heard as justification by faith and thus as involving a fearful form of works righteousness: the w...
In function, Jesus’s aphorisms are very much like his parables—provocative and invitational forms of speech. They provoke thought, lead people to reconsider their taken-for-granted assumptions, and in...