Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Mystical theologians are often unguarded, extreme, un-nuanced, pressing to the edges of heresy, sometimes beyond. Still, the mystics are worthy of study. Why? Many reasons. Unlike some late medieval and post-Reformation dogmaticians, mystical theologians are often instinctively and richly Trinitarian. Historical-critical approaches to Scripture left mystical theologians virtually untouched; mystics…
Portia of Belmont is a “lady richly left,” as Bassanio says of her in the first Act of The Merchant of Venice . Plus, she’s beautiful and wise. Suitors clamber to Belmont in hope. Her father knew it would be so, and in his will set up a fairy-tale test…
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In the nature of the case, “the” Christian meditation on Deuteronomy 14:1-21 cannot be written. Meditation offers too many possibilities, opens too many doors. There is not one and only one correct set of associations for a Christian to consider when thinking of Deuteronomy 14:1-21. We could, for example, consider…
Having retold the story of the cumulative sin of Israel leading to the great atonement on the cross, Paul then reemphasizes that, just as both Jew and Gentiles were locked into sin and judgment, now they are both justified by faith: Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded.…
Deuteronomy 14 is full of allusions to events of Israel’s history and other portions of Scripture. What would an Israelite learn by mediation on these allusions? The answer, I believe, is at least fourfold. Faith, Worship, War For the ancient Israelite first hearing Moses’ sermon, or perhaps hearing it read…
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I came across a reference to James Risen and Judy L. Thomas’s 1998 Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War in a recent article in the Weekly Standard . It’s a riveting account of the development of anti-abortion activism and extremism. It focuses a good deal of attention on the…
David L. Baker’s recent Tight Fists or Open Hands?: Wealth and Poverty in Old Testament Law is a thorough and judicious introduction to the Pentateuch’s teaching on economics. The book has a limited scope. Baker largely ignores the contemporary economic situation, and gives comparatively little attention to recent works in…
Leviticus 18 is about sex. Leviticus 20 goes over the same ground, but it’s about death. The phrase “dying you shall die” from Genesis 3 is used repeatedly in the passage, nine times. The verb “die” is used 20x. Let’s look a bit at the structure of chapter 20. Verses…
Fragments from lectures given at the recent Biblical Horizons Summer Conference. The notes that follow examine the opening verses of Leviticus 18. 1) “I am Yahweh” or some equivalent phrase is used 49 (7 x 7) times in Leviticus. The phrase is never used before chapter 11, when the “holiness”…
William Everdell’s The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought is one of the most satisfying and insightful books of cultural critique and history that I’ve read in a long time. It is impressively broad. Everdell writes with easy and often witty grace about quantum mechanics, the foundations…
INTRODUCTION Jesus has condemned the scribes and Pharisees as hypocrites, and warns that Jerusalem ’s house is going to be left desolate (Matthew 23:37 -39). Just as Yahweh destroyed the abominable sanctuary at Shiloh (1 Samuel 4-6) and Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem (2 Kings 24-25), so Jesus will return to…
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