Earlier this month I had the amazing opportunity to go on vacation in Italy, and specifically to Rome and Florence. Rome is known as ‘the Eternal City’; it’s been one of the most important cities in the Western World, if not the whole world, for about 2,500 years, and both the wonderful monuments and the … Continue reading From Age to Age: A Reflection on Psalm 90
For the most part this series on different ways Christians have understood the atonement, i.e., Christ’s saving work, will be focusing on the heaviest hitters, those images that have been the most influential or important in history. Today I’d like to do something a bit different, and think through a perspective that has never been … Continue reading Christ our Bridegroom
Last week, we started this series on the history of how Christians have understood the atonement — that is, what Jesus did that saved us — by looking at the notion of recapitulation, the idea that Jesus saved us by essentially rebooting humanity and being entirely faithful where both Adam and God’s chosen people both … Continue reading Christ our Passover
One of the trickiest issues for Christians throughout history has been how to relate to the society in which we’re embedded. After all, if Christ is our rightful King and his Kingdom is not of this world (John 18.36), it necessarily calls into question how we relate to the governments and systems that are of … Continue reading The Gospel of Good Faith: A Reflection on Matthew 22.15-22
It’s always a fascinating exercise to think about what it would have been like to be among the first Christians. For, unlike us, they did not have a ‘New Testament’. They did not have a Christian tradition to fall back on. What those first Christians had was their Jewish Scriptures and theological traditions and an … Continue reading Christ the Fulfillment: The Doctrine of Recapitulation
Matthew Root 