Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
One of the curiosities of the New Testament revelation is its focus on Galilee. The region of Galilee was given to Asher, Zebulun, Naphtali, and Issachar, and the events of Judges 4-8 occurred there, so it had some importance in Israelite history. But when the tribe of Ephraim led the…
Numbers 3:40-51 tells us that the Levites were substituted for the firstborn of Israel. The firstborn belonged to God, as stated in Exodus 13:12-13 and 22:29. It is clear that the first group of firstborn claimed by God were those He saved at the first Passover (Ex. 12). These should…
I have lived and worked in Presbyterian circles since I became convinced of the Reformed faith over twenty years ago. Thus, it is easiest and most appropriate for me to issue criticisms and to call for reformation in the Presbyterian churches. Both Scripture and my own experience, and my observation…
And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory...(John 1:14) Commentaries on John, discussing the Word or Logos in John 1, routinely turn to Greek philosophy and say that John is using a term and at least part of an idea familiar in the ancient…
John Wenham’s Redating Matthew, Mark & Luke: A Fresh Assault on the Synoptic Problem 1 is an impressively detailed treatment of the "synoptic problem." I lack both the patience and the knowledge to evaluate Wenham’s contribution to that vexing question. My purpose instead is to summarize his conclusions concerning the…
Commentators do not agree on the contents of the Book of Seven Seals (Revelation 5:1). Some see it as the New Covenant; others as the whole Word of God; others as the book of life; and others as the record of the Old Creation that is now being brought to…
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From an article by Anselm Min. “The three Persons are thus mutually internal in the unity and totality of the divine process, of which the Father is the originating principle, the Son the pluralizing, and the Spirit the reintegrating and unifying principle, and from which none could be separately considered.…
Robert Jenson writes, “the identity of Israel’s God, his difference from other gods, is precisely that Israel’s God is not eternal in the way other gods are, not God in the same way.  That the past guarantees the future is exactly the deity of the gods, but Yahweh always challenges…
Consider the birds, Jesus said.  And the lilies. Solomon had: “How beautiful you are, my darling, how beautiful you are!  Your eyes are doves” and “Like a lily among the thorns, so is my darling among the daughters.” Jesus assures us that our Father feeds and clothes us.  He might…
Hegel wants to rebut the Enlightenment dismissal of Christianity.  He doesn’t do this by reaching back to pre-critical forms of faith, but by ingesting criticism, deconstructing traditional theology, and reconstructing what he claims is a purer form of faith.  Rowan Williams captures the reconstructive process very concisely: “from the fundamental…
It is not good for man to be alone.  Hegel says, It is impossible. “I have my self-consciousness not in myself but in the other.  I am satisfied and have peace with myself only in this other - and I am only because I have peace with myself; if I…
Summarizing “logic and spirit” in Hegel, Rowan Williams describes the pressure toward relationality that is inherent in any act of thought: “We think in relation to particulars; but we cannot, quite strictly cannot, think particulars simply as particulars, because we can’t concretely think a pure self-identity.  To think a particular…
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