Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
Many years ago, while perusing Janice Anderson’s revised doctoral dissertation, Matthew’s Narrative Web: Over, and Over, and Over again , I was impressed by her attention to literary structures of repetition within and across Matthew’s Gospel. 1 Her research, in part, nudged me closer toward my present conviction that Matthew…
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
“Like a lily among the thorns, so is my love among the maidens… My beloved is mine and I am his; he pastures among the lilies.” Song 2:2, 16 In chapter two of the Song of Solomon, the Beloved compares his Love to a lily among thorns. The language of…
Introduction From the very beginning, angels and animals have played mediating roles between God and Man. Just as the World was made three-tiered (Heaven, Earth, Deep), so the creatures were made (Angels, Men, Animals). Before Christ came to build the permanent bridge across the chasm between God and Man, various…
Matthew 13, the third major discourse of the apostle’s gospel, is comprised almost entirely of parables. While it may seem that all the parables serve the same purpose in fulfilling the prophet Isaiah (Matthew 13:14), the parables found in verses 44–52, at the very least, function outside that purpose. This…
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In his fine recent biography of John Williamson Nevin, DG Hart notes that the Old School Presbyterians failed to express “the mediated character of grace and of the church’s centrality in dispensing the blessings of the gospel” as clearly as Nevin himself. He attributes this failure not to the influence…
Mark Noll makes the following important distinction between the Puritans and later evangelicals: “Although Puritans stood against Catholic and Anglican formalism, salvation for the Puritans was still mediated by institutions - family, church, covenanted society; in evangelicalism (at least in American forms), salvation was in principle unmediated except by the…
In an intriguing book published some years ago, historian David Noble described the origins of modern science among medieval monks and friars who lived in what Noble called “a world without women.” Though the book promoted every trendy academic fad existing in 1992 and was rife with contradictions (women are…
INTRODUCTION All cultures draw lines between who is “inside” and who is “outside,” and between different classes of people within the culture. Cultures lift some people up “high” and consider some people “low.” The gospel confounds the boundaries of all worldly cultures, and redraws the lines between those who are…
Isaiah 25:6-8: And the Lord of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain; a banquet of wine, choice pieces with marrow, and refined, aged wine. And on this mountain He will swallow up the covering which is over all peoples, even the veil which is…
Unlike our Bibles, which follow the order of the Septuagint, the Hebrew Bible ends with 2 Chronicles. The last word of the Hebrew Bible is the decree of Cyrus to the exiles of Jerusalem: “Let him go up.” The gospel of Matthew likewise ends with a command to “Go.” The…
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