In what at least one person has referred to as, quote, “the best movie scene I’ve ever watched,” in this part of Avengers: Endgame, we see the Avengers assembling for their final battle. On its own, that would be cool enough. But this scene is especially poignant because many of those gathering having just been resurrected from the dead.  Five years before this moment in the MCU, half of the universe was snapped from existence.

In this scene from The Good Place, the gang arrives at the Good Place and finds that it’s even better than they imagined it would be. Flying puppies, the energy you had when you were twelve, and the joy of meeting people you’ve always wanted to meet—I mean, who doesn’t want to end up in a place like that? But what’s the Good Place actually like?  Is it like this? Or is it different somehow?

At one point in The Good Place, Eleanor and the gang find themselves in the Medium Place. Now if we think of the Bad Place as more-or-less hell and the Good Place as more-or-less heaven, then the Medium Place is whatever lies in between. It’s neither good nor bad—it just kind of is, it just exists.  And while in The Good Place the Medium Place is created for one, precisely down-the-middle person who deserved neither

When I was in high school and trying to figure out the whole following Jesus thing, I encountered the guy in this video. He was a young, up-and-coming pastor at a church a couple hours north of us, a guy who asked the kind of questions that I was asking and gave answers that I was able to understand. He helped a lot of my friends think about what it meant to follow Jesus. And

A theme throughout C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series is the idea that Aslan (the analog for Jesus in the series) is “not a tame lion.” This phrase generally conveys that Aslan (and by extension God) is not what we might expect or even want. Mr. Beaver, when asked if Aslan is safe replies, “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.” Lewis here captures what is sometimes called the terror

Nearly ten years ago, we launched Conciliar Post in a very different world than the one we inhabit now. There was no Covid. Vine was the trendy short-form video platform. Taylor Swift had not yet ventured into pop music. Joe Biden was serving as Vice President. Donald Trump wasn’t even a politician. Obergefell was a year away. Bill Gates topped the world billionaires list. Roe v. Wade was the law of the land. X was

At the beginning of The Good Place, Eleanor Shellstrop finds herself in the afterlife. She’s welcomed by the mysterious Michael, who explains her demise and proceeds to show her around the Good Place while answering her many questions about what’s happening and who was right about the whole heaven and hell thing. And while the show goes on for four excellent seasons, it never really leaves this moment behind, the moment of wonder about what

I recently came across Margaret Solomon-Bird’s rendition of the Annunciation and found myself reflecting on what must have been a truly remarkable scene. I mean, imagine it: after centuries of waiting for God to intervene in the world through His long-promised Messiah, suddenly and without warning an angelic messenger shows up with the message that the Messiah is coming. But it doesn’t take place in Jerusalem or in the centers of royalty or power where

One of the most haunting moments in Amazon’s new show The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power comes in its fourth episode, when the mysterious Adar, whose origins and identity remain unclear, comes to tend a seriously injured orc. The orc and warlord lock eyes for a long moment before Adar, in an act of mercy, puts the wounded orc out of its suffering. The sequence is arresting because, in that moment, the

Against my better judgment, but because it’s irresistible fun, I have written on theonomy again. This time, in a symposium for London Lyceum. My contribution is a refutation of the common theonomist claim to the New England Puritans. It is long but I still, if you can believe it, was not able to include everything I wanted to. One point that would have been out of scope for that argument is that, in a sense,

In a previous article, I admitted the tension of experiencing unanswered prayers for my own chronic condition, all the while rejoicing in the fact that the Church heals souls; “…for what does it profit a man if he gains his whole life while destroying his soul?” There I made the claim that God primarily heals the outer human in order to prove that He can heal the inner human, because physical healing offers little benefit

There’s something primordially powerful about the idea of a house with infinite rooms, something that taps into the deepest recesses of childhood fear and wonder. All of us likely have some memory, however faint, of finding ourselves in a vast alien space that seems to go on forever. At least for me, the emotion that this thought stirs up lies somewhere at the nexus of both claustrophobia and agoraphobia—a flash of sublime awe and wonder,

Once upon a time, there was a good and gracious King. Though he was king of all the land, he gave one of his lands to his oldest subject, but this man was soon tricked by the king’s enemy into giving up his authority over the land. The king’s enemy ruled with wickedness, and an iron fist. He allowed injustice, championed selfishness, and permitted evil. Under the evil king, the people of the land hurt

If you are a publicly confessing Christian for long enough you will likely encounter an interesting event: at some point a secular friend will ask for your prayers. It is often the same one who gets annoyed when you can’t make brunch on Sunday morning, or who was obviously uncomfortable at your church wedding. Generally the request for prayer follows a moment of immediate need: a scary medical diagnosis, or a layoff with impending financial

I see it time and again…my two-year-old daughter, who has been walking for over a year, decides to take off and ends up falling flat on the floor. It’s very cute, and she gets up and acts like it was nothing, but my breath catches every time it happens. It catches because I know that this time, she could land awkwardly and break her arm or worse. She knows how to walk, and she knows

The great Anglican priest and preacher, John Stott, once lamented that the Church had decided to speak of Jesus’ entry into heaven as the Feast of the Ascension. It would be more biblical, insisted Stott, to speak instead of the Feast of the Exaltation of Christ. Just as Jesus was raised from the dead by the Father, so too was he taken up into heaven by the Father. Both of these events testify not to

Quick: what are the names of the popular members of the royal family who will one day serve as King and Queen of the United Kingdom? Now, what are the names of the famous married couple whose Depression-era gang became the scourge of the FBI? And finally, what are the names of the husband-and-wife pop duo that was so popular in the 60s and 70s that they go by their first names even to this

Unfortunately, Cara explains that the rest of his article will focus on works-righteousness, and that he will not undertake an examination of Old Testament covenantal nomism. It is unclear why he chooses to do this, but to ignore the entire basis for NPP soteriology (and Cara explicitly admits that covenantal nomism is the basis from which NPP theology develops) is argumentative malpractice. Cara cites only extra-Biblical Jewish texts in an attempt to show that at

To recap, Cara concludes that, in NPP soteriology, “Justification is no longer a once-for-all declaration that by grace alone God declares sinners to be righteous in his sight based on the work of Christ alone through the instrument of faith alone.” In stating this, Cara betrays a belief that justification is God stating that sinners are righteous even when we are not, because of Jesus’ work. The NPP belief is that justification is God stating

I am by no means an expert—in fact, I’m probably not even “well-versed”—in the New Perspective on Paul and the various views that fall under that umbrella. My education on the NPP came experientially, as I began to sense a disconnect between what my Lutheran upbringing taught me and what Scripture says, especially the gospels. I came to see that the version of Lutheran salvific theology I was raised to believe was not in the