One of the most eminent spin doctors of the fourth century, Augustine bemoaned that he was merely a vendito verborum (a peddler of words). After he became a Christian he gave up what he perceived as arrogant rhetoric designed to impress, instead cultivating what he…

Hudson Community Chapel is a suburban church in the Midwest that averages a little over three thousand people each weekend. We were ranked as one of the top one hundred fastest-growing churches in 2007. I think we have done some things well, and I don't…

It must by now be questionable whether the word "mission"retains any residual value for missiology. Humpty Dumpty's approach to language—"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less" —perhaps reflects his creator's diagnosis of a degenerative…

"For to freedom you yourselves were called, brothers; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another."—Gal 5:131 This paper explores the contemporary hermeneutical2 approach of literary pragmatism, analyzing both the benefits and the potential dangers…

In the course of Christian history, nowhere has the tension between the teachings of Jesus and valid application of those teachings in postbiblical socio-cultural circumstances manifested itself more clearly than surrounding the issue of violence. Stemming from the sixteenth-century divide between pro-statist Magisterial and anti-statist…

Readers of the Expository Times were recently encouraged to pull up a chair and eavesdrop as James Dunn and Robert Morgan dialogued concerning faith and history and the "quest for the historical Jesus." Although the discussion centered upon James Dunn's Jesus Remembered, both contributors acknowledged…

In a recent class on the medieval church, I did my traditional two hours on medieval mystics, covering such personages as Bonaventure, Meister Eckhart, Hildegard of Bingen, and Julian of Norwich. I also included Thomas Aquinas to make the point that mysticism, at least in…