Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In this essay we will think about how the whole Bible is structured as one Word of God. To begin with, there is only one Bible, not two. While we divide the Bible into Old and New Testaments, that division has no more meaning than divisions into chapters and verse,…
How should one badly bruised and inadequate church relate to another? (I am not addressing the blessed possessors of absolutely perfect churches, naturally.) I believe there are three things to bear in mind. First, we must be open to the values in other Christian traditions - even Roman Catholic and…
The third and sixth day have a second creative act. Note the chiastic arrangement of the material in these special acts and the parallelism between them, see the figure below. The author arranges the description of each day as a chiasm. Each line in the chiasm is mated with a…
Now the two of them were naked, the man and his woman, and they did not sense shame (Genesis 2:25) The nakedness of Adam and Eve requires several comments. First of all, against those who think that nakedness is what God intended for humanity as a permanent estate, we have…
I’ve been reflecting on the meaning of integration, and our longing for integration in a fragmented world. I’ve been connecting my own covenant epistemology further with the thought of scientist-philosopher Michael Polanyi, artist Makoto Fujimura, and Classical Christian metaphysician D.C. Schindler. In my last post , and now in this…
Luke 13:31-33 is one of the strangest passages in the Gospel of Luke. It begins with a time note that sounds emphatic “At that very hour.” Then, we are told of Pharisees bringing a message that Herod wants to kill Jesus! In His answer, Jesus speaks of a three day…
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From Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols , on "reason" in philosophy: "You ask me what all idiosyncrasy is in philosophers? . . . For instance their lack of the historical sense, their hatred even of the idea of Becoming, their Egyptianism. They imagine that they do honour to a thing…
Martin Hauge's Descent from the Mountain draws attention to the parallels between Israel's reaction to Yahweh's direct revelation of the Ten Words (Exodus 20:18-21) and the golden calf incident and its aftermath (Exodus 32-34). The two episodes are introduced similarly: "the formal contacts of 20.18 and 32.1 [are] possible signs…
What does Yahweh mean when He introduces Himself to Moses as ' ehyeh ʾăšer 'ehyeh (Exodus 3)? Victor Hamilton (Exodus) notes that the traditional translation "I am who I am" is too constricting. Grammatically the phrase has multiple possible meanings: "The term 'ehyeh is a first-person imperfect of the verb…
Paul DeHart argues that Christianity, not the Enlightenment, gave us the separation of church and state. He cites Gelasius. He points out that Christianity challenged the near-universal institution of sacral kingship on Christological grounds. He of course alludes to Jesus' statement about the things of God and the things of…
Eric Laursen's forthcoming The Duty to Stand Aside provides an intimate glimpse into British debates about Allied tactics during World War II. He focuses on the "wartime quarrel of George Orwell and Alex Comfort." Orwell needs no introduce. Comfort is best known for his Joy of Sex , published long…
The letter to the Hebrews is sometimes read as a brief for a cultless, liturgy-free Christianity. Barnabas Lindars ( Theology of the Letter to the Hebrews ) argues that, on the contrary, the letter is a defense of Christian cult. He provides an innovative sketch of the pastoral impetus behind…
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