Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
References to the Son of Man coming on the clouds occur five times in the Synoptic Gospels. Three times such expressions appear in the parallel accounts of the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24:30; Mark 13:36; Luke 21:27). Then, in parallel accounts of Jesus’ trial before the leaders of Israel, such expressions…
Just what the difference is in the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and the New Testament is a question not so easily answered. The distinction is often said to be that in the Old Testament the Holy Spirit is on the believer, but in the New…
1. Introduction You should think of 1917 at church on Sunday. Why? Let me explain. There's one film every Oscar season which everyone seems to have watched—your parents, your colleagues, even your pastor. This year, it's 1917— Sam Mendes' WW1 epic following two British Tommies on a seemingly impossible quest…
This piece was originally part of the Bowyer response to the Theopolis series surrounding Professor McDermott’s essay, “Rethinking Israel.” For the sake of brevity, it was removed from the initial response, to be published as a standalone piece. As we’ve argued previously , we are strongly supportive of the right…
Richard Bauckham’s groundbreaking work, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony , is profoundly insightful, but the message of the book is hampered by the presupposition of Marcan priority. Ironically the place where this assumption perhaps does its most damage is in Bauckham’s discussion of the apostle Matthew…
The Protestant Reformation was defined by certain clarifying disagreements between the medieval Church and those who came to be known as Protestant Reformers. Chief among these was the nature of justification: whether one was justified by works, or by faith and works, or—as Martin Luther contended—by faith alone. Now over…
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Study of the sacramental in early modern English poetry has become a cottage industry in literary scholarship. Kimberley Johnson isn't satisfied with the direction this scholarship has taken, and in her Made Flesh , she offers a corrective. Much of the scholarship has focused on sacramental, especially Eucharistic, doctrine as…
What is sacrifice for? Many ancient cultures thought that animal offers fed the gods. The situation is more ambiguous for ancient Greeks. As Charles Stocking points out in his Politics of Sacrifice in Early Greek Myth and Poetry , the only explicit evidence for the notion that sacrifice is food…
In a TLS review of several recent books on China , Gavin Jacobson highlights the role of geography and history in the formation of contemporary Chinese politics. Geography first: "China is enclosed within 14,000 miles of land borders and a 9,000-mile sea edge. Twenty countries lie next to it, including…
In an essay in the Economic Journal (117 [2007] 146-73), Robert Sugden and Luigino Bruni describe how "psychology was removed from economics, and how it might be brought back." The development of behavior economics provides a starting point for them to examine the "Pareto turn," the work of Vilfredo Pareto…
In a long and stimulating piece in the New Atlantis , Samuel Matlack explores the role of metaphor in contemporary physics, especially with regard to the challenges of translating the mathematical formulae of theory into popular writing. Have we, he asks, transcended the need for poetry in our explanations of…
In a discussion of a First Things article about Christian colleges by Carl Trueman, Rod Dreher writes : Sometimes I hear Christians saying things along the lines of, 'Bring it on! The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church!' etc. These are the kind of romantics who…
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