theology

Stephen Webb on why food is simply fuel, and nothing more.

Among the slogans of the recent food movement is the admonition, “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food.” This slogan makes a surprising assumption: that the eaters being addressed don’t know what their food is. You can imagine this shift in consciousness and may have undergone it yourself—while considering your Hostess cupcake or energy drink, you […]

According to the Gospel of John, when Jesus first appears after his resurrection he is mistaken for a gardener. He comes to Mary Magdalene, who is weeping at the empty tomb, and she asks him what has been done with Jesus’s body. But perhaps this case of mistaken identity tells us something about the character […]

Finally, after two decades of hard work (or, well, more like two years of me kind of trying), Third-Way Allegiance: Christian Witness in the Shadow of Religious Empire is finally out. This is a collection of brief theological articles discussing everything from national holidays to Steve Irwin, from Star Trek to parthenogenesis (and nope, Mother Mary, female whipped-tail lizards, and marmokrebs decidely do not get […]

That contemporary America is captivated by the phenomenon of celebrity is hardly a contestable observation. Even those of us who try to limit the impact of celebrity on our life find that its tenacity is hard to overcome. Some try to overcome the impact of celebrity by willing its insignificance. But that some energy is […]

We are finally getting some press on this lovely book that includes contributions from folks such as John Milbank, D. Stephen Long, and Rosalee Ewell. If you have ever wondered what the Radical Orthodoxy movement might learn from the Radical Reformation (or, vice versa) this is the book for you. If you haven’t ever entertained such […]

Doug Frank. A Gentler God: Breaking Free of the Almighty in the Company of the Human Jesus. Eugene, OR. Wipf & Stock, 2010. $22.40.     I must confess, at the outset, that I know Dr. Doug Frank. I was a student in the Oregon Extension program he cofounded in southern Oregon and I have […]

In his recently published Darwin’s Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get it Wrong, Conor Cunningham, the Co-Director of the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham, surveys the vast expanse of evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, philosophy of mind, naturalism, and intelligent design and skillfully argues against the reductive logics […]

John Piper didn’t waste any time. Six days after the devastating earthquake in Japan, he published a post on his Desiring God blog entitled “Japan: After Empathy and Aid, People Want Answers.”  Here the revered Reformed Baptist theologian and pastor plunges (as he has done on many occasions before) boldly into the field of theodicy. […]