Josephus does not tell us that Christianity is true, and Christians do not need Josephus to tell them that Christ is risen. But Christianity makes claims about things that happened in public history under identifiable rulers, priests, and governors. For that reason, testimony from outside the church matters.
Today, the longing for cultural Christianity on both the left and the right hearkens back to an older version of Christendom that was a mixed blessing for the church in the western world. The cultural mediation of Christian views on created order has certainly benefitted the civilization we’ve inherited. But the gospel itself isn’t something that can be reduced to cultural mediation either. Instead, the gospel as a message stands apart from all human accomplishments and achievements, no matter how beneficial they might be.
The student of Scripture should always have a map open next to their Bible as they read. If possible, they should also travel to Israel, not to make a pilgrimage, but to see the context of the land in which these stories took place. These are not fairy tales made up about fictional fantasy lands; these are stories about real people in real places interacting with a real God.

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You will not be disappointed in this Champion of the Incarnation.
Ethics begins not with our doing, but with the Triune God’s giving.
False holiness is always a possession and achievement of the individual in isolation from the good of others. And so it isn’t holiness at all.
The church is the only place God promises to lift us out of ourselves not in order to become more like God but so that we may finally be freed from our obsession with becoming little gods.
Despite his trust in empiricism, throughout his life, Locke never entirely let go of the inspired Scriptures—or perhaps more accurately, the Scriptures never let go of him.
This is an excerpt from Vocation: The Setting for Human Flourishing written by Michael Berg (1517 Publishing, 2021). Available for purchase this Tuesday!
Undue Protestant antipathies toward Mary have muted not only her place in redemption history and its necessary connection to Christology, but also the virtue of virginity.
It’s not the disciples’ faith that invented the resurrection but the resurrection that gave birth to the disciples’ faith.
Has the modern world taken too strong a dose of the gospel as its inheritance from the Reformation?
On this day in the year 1093, Anselm was consecrated as the archbishop of Canterbury.
By basing our assurance on the promises of God, which we not only hope for in the future but live in now, the Christian can finally rest in the comfort that they are both saved and not responsible for their own salvation.
The gospel does not proclaim the results of our practical reasoning about things we experience, but the horror of God crucified for our sins and at our hands.