Because the biblical story unfolds in real places among real people, archaeology helps us understand the world in which God's saving work took place and, in turn, enriches our reading of Scripture.
The Reformers did not return to the sources because they believed the old was better than the new, nor because antiquity possesses authority simply by virtue of its age. They returned to the sources to recover the language and words that were actually written and spoken, especially those by great teachers and, most importantly, God Himself.
The certainty of faith is utter assurance because it depends upon nothing of your own. It is entirely trusting that God is a propitious, pardoning God—the God who justifies sinners by forgiving them.

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We can’t remove our crosses or the reality of our deaths. Only Jesus can.
Christians can pursue projects of justice free of the burden of being the justifier of the world; that office belongs to Christ and Christ alone.
What do such callings look like? They are ordinary and everyday.
The Passover wasn’t just Israel’s story; it’s ours.
Bringing your family to church to receive “the one thing needful” (Luke 10:42) in Word and Sacrament honors and pleases God.
There’s a difference between refusing revenge and refusing responsibility.
The crisis is not merely that people are leaving. The crisis is that we have relinquished what is uniquely Lutheran and deeply needed.
Christmas is not only about a cradle in Bethlehem, it’s also about a cross outside Jerusalem where salvation was won for us.
This ancient “tale of two mothers” concerns far more than theological semantics—it is the difference between a God who sends and a God who comes.
Was Jesus ambitious or unambitious? We have to say that the answer is…yes.
Thanksgiving, then, is not just about plenty. It is about redemption.
While Thoreau’s Walden is seen as a central text of that most American of virtues—self-reliance—quiet ambition as envisioned by Tinetti is exactly the opposite: dependence on God.