This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 in Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer to the Christian Life (1517 Publishing, 2025). Sinner Saint is available today from 1517 Publishing.
On its journey from Byzantium to Constantinople to Istanbul, this special place helps us understand the broader arc of Christian history, which goes on until Christ's return.
We needn’t fear statistics and studies as palm readings into a certain future. God is God, and his Spirit is alive through his Word.

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God is consistently rooting us in reality—both what is seen and unseen—because that is where he is.
To “trust in God in trial” means we fight our battles by kneeling and praying to “the Holy One of Israel,” who works out our deliverance by himself.
God’s goodness spoke a promise of peace and mercy to the bewildered, a promise that rings out to this day.
There is power in the name of Jesus, and we love to manipulate power for our own ends.
Our comfort in this seemingly endless age of crisis after crisis is the inexhaustible hope of Jesus’s reversal.
On Saturday, July 16, Luke Gabriel Bird died in a hiking accident in Chile. He was a midshipman in the United States Naval Academy. He is our son. Here are some reflections on his life, his faith, and his Lord.
Faith is like a horse with blinders because it only beholds God’s promise. It is obsessed with what God has already said.
Gregory is a bridge between the patristic age and the medieval.
Cyril’s fervor for pure explication of the gospel was present throughout his career.
We cannot overstate that no person outside the Bible has been as influential to Christian theology as Augustine.
Origen is wrong about stuff, but he had the foresight to say that if he was wrong, he was open to correction.
You will not be disappointed in this Champion of the Incarnation.