The grace of having a vulnerable God
“All need Thee, even those who are unaware of their need—these most of all. He who hungers goes in search of bread and knows not that his hunger is for Thee; he who thirsts imagines that his longing is for water, but his thirst is for Thee; he who is sick believes he is seeking health by many means, and his sickness is ...
The pop apocalypse in movie theatres
Please, not now! Don’t come right now! Please... I suddenly opened my eyes in the darkness of my bedroom and, all of a sudden, the heat wave building up during the nightmare met the coolness of the night reality. You haven’t come yet... Thank you, God!
The Ecumenism Files Part II: Ecclesial unity and the terror of medieval (religious) history
The troubled centuries that followed the Great Schism of 1054 and the corresponding climate inside the Christian church gradually gave way to profound shifts in the thinking and spirituality of Europeans.
The Protestant Reformation: The river that runs through the whole earth
The Protestant Reformation was a tumultuous river, the flow of which began to become visible in 1517. A significant contribution to this eruption was made by its tributaries, the (pre-) Reformation movements: the Waldenses, Albigensians, Lollards, Hussites, etc.—true springs of the main Protestant current, which took over their force in its flow through history.
The disgrace of (anti-)Catholicism
This topic seems to be a matter of picking through the rubbish in order to survive. Who cares about Protestant protest today? Anti-Catholicism, like anti-Protestantism, represents natural and culturally legitimate attitudes that can be judged by their motivation, spirit and content—aspects that are apparently obscure but, when examined, become very transparent.
The paradox of independence: freedom at the cost of connection
The controversial story of Baruch Spinoza takes on a fascinating dimension with the explosive excommunication from the Jewish community decreed by the leaders of the Portuguese Sephardic community in Amsterdam—a decision accompanied by one of the most severe anathemas. This document made Spinoza one of the most reviled philosophers by both Jews and Christians, but attitudes towards him began to change after the...
Franz Hasel | The guardian angel’s weapon
In the most difficult moments of his life, Franz Hasel prayed: “Lord, if I am attacked, I will have no way to defend myself. I must trust in You to be my protector. My life is in Your hands.”
The seasons of (un)belief in Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens was not merely an atheist but, as he described himself, a militant antitheist. It was in his home, at his invitation, that the group known as “The Four Horsemen of New Atheism” first convened. Born in 1949 in postwar England, Hitchens was shaped by the politics and intellectual currents of the 1960s.
The spiritual community of readers
For almost six years, I relentlessly pursued Dr. Bill Knott to interview him for the programme Starting Point. He had been editor-in-chief of the Seventh-day Adventist Church's official publication, Adventist Review, for a decade. Finally, in early 2016, we sat down for an interview in which we discussed how he developed his talent as a writer and the current significance of the Adventist...
What did Jesus believe about hell?
In Dante Aligheri's Divine Comedy, written in the early 14th century, hell is described as a "city of woe" and a place of "eternal pain"—metaphors of endless suffering.
Sacred writings
How do the Christian Scriptures differ from non-Christian sacred writings (the Quran, Vedas, Dharmas, Book of Mormon, etc.)?
What do dreams mean?
Last night I had one of those dreams. You know, the kind you wake up from and remember. Basically, there were a lot of things that were unusual, but people and places that were familiar—common themes for many who remember their dream content.
The Pentecostal movement: Pentecostalism and the Reformation
Pentecostalism has its origin in the Greek word Pentecost, which means “fifty” and refers to the receiving of the Holy Spirit by the apostles on the feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem, followed by speaking in tongues (glossolalia). However, this Pentecostal phenomenon predates the Pentecostal movement which began at the beginning of the 20th century.
Trusting faith
An ordinary wooden chair is a metaphor that’s often used to talk about the key dynamics of faith. But it’s worth exploring further. Perhaps we could describe this as a process of developing the theory of a chair.
God, armed violence and genocide
One of today's dilemmas disputes, dialectically, the complex reality of the Bible and the secular way of looking at the "terror of history": Is God a source of morality superior to humanism, or not?


























