Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
“We have a God who hides things because He loves to be sought out, chewed out and found out.” As Christians, we are rightly taught that we must not question God’s Word. The problem is that the Scriptures record many things which appear to have been given to us for…
The book of Revelation is a liturgy. John begins “in the Spirit” on the “Lord’s day” (1:10). Jesus appears, and Jesus tells him to record messages to seven churches, words of encouragement and rebuke, like the call to worship and confession at the beginning of a Christian liturgy. In chapter…
In my previous posts, I looked at the theme of creation as it is found in a sequence of psalms devoted to Yahweh’s Kingship (Psalms 93-100). Among other matters, these psalms declare that when the Kingdom of Israel’s God comes, it is the Kingdom of the world’s own Creator .…
The church in Corinth was a pastoral nightmare. Factionalism, sexual immorality, incipient syncretism, using the church as a stage for self-promotion, and denial of the final resurrection were just some of the problems. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church, he confronts each of these problems directly and in…
The first chapters of the Word of God have a poetic rhythm. This is used to discredit their accuracy as historical narrative, but the truth is that these same rhythms continue far beyond the book of Genesis. In fact, the later texts shed light on the frustratingly succinct account of…
Mr. Martian: What’s that there? Mr. Edison: (Edison holds up a standard, 60 watt lightbulb). It’s a lightbulb. Mr. Martian: A “lightbulb” you say? What exactly is a “lightbulb”? Mr. Edison: A lightbulb is an object used to illuminate a dark area, say a room. It’s made primarily of filament…
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Philip Esler draws on the anthropological work of Anthony Cohen to suggest that Paul’s reference to “biting” and “devouring” may describe the actual internal life of Paul’s churches: “Anthony Cohen’s argument about the persistence of liminality among persons once they have crossed a boundary to join a new group raises…
Paul contrasts fulfilling the law of loving neighbor with biting, devouring, and consuming. Love for neighbor is human behavior; anything else is feral. The verb “bite” ( dakno ) is used only in Galatians 5:15 in the NT, and only twice in the LXX (Genesis 49:17; Deuteronomy 8:15), both references…
Galatians 5-6 turns a number of Pauline terms inside out. After spending most of the letter polemicizing against seeking justification form the “works of the law,” Paul rehabilitates both “work” (5:6) and “law” (5:14; 6:2). After announcing that in Christ we have been freed from the Egypt of Judaic managers…
Galatians 5-6 is organized as a chiasm, with the exhortation to bear one another’s burdens, and fulfill the law of Christ, at the center. The structure suggests that that the freedom that the Spirit grants is precisely freedom to bear the burdens of others as Christ as done for us.…
Freeman again: He claims that Constantine employed the image of the sun, used in both Christianity and paganism, to maintain “his neutral position between opposing faiths.” In part, his interpretation is based on HA Drake. But the neutrality that Drake talks about is a neutrality in “public space” that enabled…
Freeman says that Constantine’s “conversion” was a shrewd political act, basing this conclusion, he claims, on “recent research.” (Burckhardt is recent??) One sign of his shrewdness was his ability to satisfy both Christian and pagan: “Some very careful political manoeuvring was necessary if Constantine was to avoid offending either Christian…
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