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.
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.
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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Advent is one big answer to the question of free will in matters of salvation. God is free. Our will is bound.
My nonfiction reads took me into Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and various varieties of Protestantism. Some of my favorites didn’t fall into neat and tidy categories, such as Jordan Peterson and Richard Selzer. It was difficult to narrow the list down, but here are my 12 1/2 favorites of the year.
The Pope Leo X used the psalm description of a boar uprooting grape vines in a vineyard as a metaphor for what the upstart German monk had been doing at that backwater university.
Luther’s theology lets the believer in Christ dwell under the cerulean sky of God’s unchanging grace.
He was a beggar on the streets. And, he was as good as dead if he didn't receive a blessing. The words, "you're cursed" haunted his mind.
When we say in the benediction, “The LORD make His face shine on you,” grace is what we mean.
God acts through His Word and means in order to create, restore, and renew inward faith.
Divine election hacking happens with the proposal that God’s Word is irrelevant and powerless, weak and impotent.
While 500 years is certainly something to be celebrated, to always focus on the anniversary number could run the risk of forgetting the true meaning behind the reason we remember the Reformation as an important period in the history of the Christian church.
Consolation is the breath of life filling our lungs, hearts, and minds with the fresh, incorruptible air of the new creation.
The following is an excerpt from the introduction to Theology of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation written by Steve Paulson and edited by Kelsi Klembara and Caleb Keith (1517 Publishing, 2018).
It is only when individuals are bound together in community that they become fully human.