Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). The famous definition of faith with which the eleventh chapter of Hebrews opens has received a number of different interpretations. The crux of the problem is the interpretation of the words translated in…
This essay is an exploration of one element of the final of the four Gospels, the Gospel of John. My thesis is that the Gospel of John answers the issue of "friendship" being a homoerotic category. It challenges the "Greek Way of Love and Friendship" 1 It is indeed the…
"And I also way to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it" (Matthew 16:18). Matthew 16:13ff. has historically been one of the most oft-cited passages of Scripture. Throughout the Middle Ages, it was used…
Matthew 8-9 records three clusters of miracles, interspersed with snatches of Jesus’ teaching about various aspects of discipleship. Just as the Sermon on the Mount displays the authority of Jesus’ Word in teaching, these chapters display the authority of Jesus’ Word over sickness, uncleanness, the creation, demons, and death. In…
The association of women and wells in the Scriptures has long been noted by theologians, a symbolism closely connected to marriage which begins in Genesis and climaxes in Revelation. There is a lesson drawn in the water of wells that I’d like to explore, but before that I must trace…
Of course, since the Israelites had agriculture, Solomon was not paleolithic as that term is used today. But "paleo" is simply a prefix meaning old or previous , the opposite of "neo." In that sense, I wonder if we might understand Solomon better if we interpret his statements and riddles…
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Early in his Tragic Sense of Life , Unamuno captures the profound connection between autonomy and tragic character in a passage of hyperventilating passion: “The visible universe, the universe that is created by the instinct of self-preservation, becomes all to narrow for me. It is like a cramped cell, against…
There’s something chiastic going on in 3:19-31 (or maybe 2:25-3:30). A. by works of law no flesh shall be justified, 19-20 B. Apart from law, righteousness of God is revealed, 21 C. righteousness through faith in Jesus—> for all have sinned, 22-23 D. being justified as a gift through Jesus…
A touch of Spenserian humor: Spenser has a witch create a false Florimell (Book 3) for her slothful and unattractive son, who is smitten with the beauty of the real Florimell. The witch uses materials from Petrarchan love sonnets to construct the lady ?Eactual lamps for eyes, actual golden wire…
Spenser might provide a Milbankian response to Milbank’s endorsement of homosexual sex and “threesomes.” In Book 3 of The Faerie Queene , Spenser’s heroine is Britomart, the lady knight who represents a militant chastity directed toward marital and sexual consummation rather than a fearful virginity that simply avoids sex. Britomart…
William Allan Oram in a book on Spenser writes that “one of the fruitful false etymologies of the Renaissance was the derivation of HERO from EROS: by this understanding, love does not hinder noble deeds but spurs them on.”
Also in the November 7 TLS (belatedly on my desk) is a review of Lukas Erne’s Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist , in which Erne challenges the popularly accepted notion that Shakespeare was writing for viewers rather than readers. He shows that plays were being written for publication in Shakespeare’s time,…
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