Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
While controversies over the writings of Paul continue in various corners of the intellectual globe, the word of God given through Paul and his scribe and all of the church’s interpreters and translators over the last two millennia is still readily available to the lofty and the lowly. Paul, as…
The second in a series of studies in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 22:30: A man shall not take his father’s wife, and shall not uncover his father’s wing (Hebrew: kanaf ). There are a number of unusual features in this law that mark it out from the previous context, indicating that it…
The texts of Christianity have been slowly at work, under the power of the Holy Spirit for 2000 years now. If we could be magically transported back into the world of two millennia ago, modern Americans would be shocked at the cruelty of that world. There was no concern for…
The Story of the Gadarene Madman is told in all three synoptic Gospels (Matthew 8:28-34, Mark 5:1-20, Luke 8:26-37). Jesus ventures into a Gentile area when He passes over the Sea of Galilee. Upon disembarking from his boat, he is immediately met by a demon-possessed madman. Upon meeting Jesus, he…
Part 1 of a multi-part series of studies on Deuteronomy 22:30-23:8. Eric Auerbach, in his classic work on Western literature, devotes his first chapter to contrasting Homer with the Bible. Of Homer, he writes of the “need of Homeric style to leave nothing which it mentions half in darkness and…
Trinity House Fellow James B. Jordan will be a speaker at an International Conference on Biblical Symbolism that will be held in Seoul on Monday, May 27 in 2013. He will address "The Importance of Biblical Symbolism and Symbolic Interpretation of the Bible." The conference will have three other speakers…
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In 325, Constantine wrote a letter announcing the deposition of Eusebius of Nicomedia. As Timothy Barnes points out, it exemplifies the “pattern of respect tempered with frustration” that characterized Constantine’s relations with the bishops. One passage is reminiscent of Paul’s rebuke of the Galatians: “it was truly worthy of wonder…
2 Chronicles 3:1: Solomon began to build the house of Yahweh in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David, at the place that David had prepared, on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. Naomi gives Ruth specific instructions for her approach to Boaz:…
Ruth 3 begins and ends with “rest.” Naomi seeks “rest” for Ruth (v. 1), and after Ruth meets Boaz on the threshing floor, Naomi assures her daughter-in-law and Boaz will not “rest” until he has finished the task. That’s his job as a redeemer: To bring rest. Redeemers buy brothers…
Fenn quotes Daniel Bell’s complaints that liturgies “drain” energies that should belong to useful institutions like political parties and comments “On this view, the genuine public sphere is outside the church, which becomes the sphere of private self-absorption and self-celebration.” By contrast, “to the believer, it is the liturgy that…
Fenn again: Liturgy is the public work of the people and thus “to be a person . . . meant [for the Greeks] precisely to have a role in the public work of the community.” Thus, “to take part in the Christian liturgy is to take on one’s role in…
Richard Fenn writes, “In secularized Western societies . . . many individuals are caught in a double-bind. On the one hand, they take seriously the role of the credible witness, and seek, on grounds of their own testimony, to be taken seriously, whether they are reporting what they saw on…
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