Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Paul writes to Jews, “You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?” (Romans 2:22b) The English translation “rob temples” makes readers think of pagan temples. There was only one Temple for Israel, so robbing more than one would indicate other temples are in view. And if the Jews wanted to…
Two offerings Humanity’s first vocation involves guarding and serving the trees that emerge from the ground (Genesis 2:15). God provides these trees to humanity for food. A serpent appears and tempts the couple to eat from a special forbidden tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Humanity…
At the outset of the Torah (as Christians understand it), a triune God creates the heavens and earth over the course of a seven-day week. Why? What’s the connection between the three and the seven? Could a triune God have created the world over any period of time he chose?…
How relevant to the modern reader are the flying axe head of Deuteronomy 19:5 and the roof parapet of Deuteronomy 22:8? Indeed, how relevant were they to the daily lives of Israelites thirty-five hundred years ago? Suppose that accidental falls from rooftops were exceedingly uncommon in ancient Israel, or that…
1 For most of my life, the standing of the American church as a source of national social and political order was measured by reports from the front of the so-called “culture wars.” 2 Memory brings to mind battles over feminism and the ERA, so-called gay rights, the breakdown of…
But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel…’ And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the…
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Schweitzer didn’t think so, but he did think that Paul prepared the ground for Hellenization. According to the summary found in Stephen Neill and N. T. Wright’s history of New Testament interpretation, Schweitzer identified the primary historical problem of Paul studies, namely to explain the transition from Jesus to Paul…
Irenaeus interpreted Jesus’ parable of the laborers in the vineyard as a parable about Jews and Gentiles (Matthew 20:1-16). The first-hour men are Jews, and the eleventh-hour men, who slip into the vineyard at the last minute, are Gentiles converted by the apostles. Over the surly objections of the Jews,…
Luke 3-4 follows, like Matthew 3-4, the history of Israel. Jesus is the true Israel, recapitulating Israel’s failed story. But the sequence is somewhat different in the two passages. In Matthew, Jesus receives baptism from John, enters the wilderness to be tempted, begins His ministry in Galilee, before ascending to…
INTRODUCTION Jesus continues on the way toward Jerusalem , predicting His own future and teaching the Twelve about discipleship. They don’t understand, but fortunately Jesus is the compassionate Son of David, who opens blind eyes ( 20:29 -34). THE TEXT “Now Jesus, going up to Jerusalem, took the twelve disciples…
Psalm 89 explicitly tells us that Yahweh entered into a covenant with David (v. 28), which makes David the firstborn over the kings of the earth (v. 27) and promises a perpetual seed and sonship (vv. 26, 29). The Psalm as a whole, however, is about an apparently broken covenant.…
In the first volume of his history of ethics, Terence Irwin gievs a chapter to Plato, four to Aristotle, but nine to Aquinas. Reviewing the book in the TLS , Anthony Kenny says that Aquinas “emerges as the hero of the entire volume,” and, after noting that Irwin holds a…
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