Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Optimism is “an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome.” 1 On the other hand, pessimism is “an inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities or to expect the worst possible outcome.” We can see that optimism and…
If we wish to understand the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we must begin with seeing them as a part of the creational order. Trees, along with plants and seed-bearing things, come to life by the word of God as part of…
“I chant slips and irreversible disasters, wiltings, failures, scars, the little disappointments and the large, blue streaks down a world that wishes it was only suncolors.” Paul J. Pastor from Kintsugi Song I recently lost something very valuable. Something I’d had for years and used every day. But, it wasn’t…
In his eponymous book, Jonah follows an exodus pattern. He travels through the waves and east of the city into the wilderness. On a first reading, it looks like another use of this common literary shape in the Old Testament: salvation through the waters of death and the wilderness of…
“Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” The unknowing master of ceremonies didn’t know how right he was. We see this play out in John’s apocalypse. The end is like the beginning,…
Read in isolation, The Test of Adultery (Num 5:11-31) presents the reader with a seemingly bizarre ritual, conjuring up ideas bordering on the Salem Witch Trials. Beyond this, pressing questions linger—such as, “Why is the woman in particular singled out, while no test is provided for the husband of a…
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Hobbes again ( Leviathan 41) on the Mosaic predecessors to Christian baptism: “As the children of Israel had for a sacrament of their reception into the kingdom of God, before the time of Moses, the rite of circumcision, which rite, having been omitted in the wilderness, was again restored as…
NT Wright’s thesis about the new heavens and new earth receives support from an unexpected source, Leviathan , chapter 38: “All these places are for salvation, and the kingdom of God , after the day of judgement, upon earth. On the other side, I have not found any text that…
The first time the Hebrew verb “be wrathful” ( qatzaf ) occurs with Yahweh as subject is in Leviticus 10:6. The related noun occurs for the first time in Numbers 1:53. Both, importantly, have to do with the tabernacle. Yahweh warns that His wrath might break out against Aaron’s family…
Following up an earlier post: How are we to understand the connection of the reception of the Spirit and being counted as righteous in Galatians 3:5-6? Some alternatives suggest themselves: 1) Righteousness is a status and the Spirit is the gift that God gives to those whom He counts righteous.…
Faith in Protestant theology is instrumental, the passive human means by which we appropriate the righteousness of Christ, by which we stand righteous before God. In Galatians at least, Paul’s characteristic construction doesn’t use the usual prepositions of instrumentality - en and dia . Rather, he uses ek , which…
What did God promise Abraham? Paul says that Abraham and his seed were promised an inheritance (Galatians 3:18, 29), and that inheritance includes the blessing of the nations (Galatians 3:8), the gift of the Spirit (Galatians 3:14), and righteousness (Galatians 3:6). These are not discrete gifts in Paul’s mind. The…
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