Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
References to the Son of Man coming on the clouds occur five times in the Synoptic Gospels. Three times such expressions appear in the parallel accounts of the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24:30; Mark 13:36; Luke 21:27). Then, in parallel accounts of Jesus’ trial before the leaders of Israel, such expressions…
Just what the difference is in the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and the New Testament is a question not so easily answered. The distinction is often said to be that in the Old Testament the Holy Spirit is on the believer, but in the New…
1. Introduction You should think of 1917 at church on Sunday. Why? Let me explain. There's one film every Oscar season which everyone seems to have watched—your parents, your colleagues, even your pastor. This year, it's 1917— Sam Mendes' WW1 epic following two British Tommies on a seemingly impossible quest…
This piece was originally part of the Bowyer response to the Theopolis series surrounding Professor McDermott’s essay, “Rethinking Israel.” For the sake of brevity, it was removed from the initial response, to be published as a standalone piece. As we’ve argued previously , we are strongly supportive of the right…
Richard Bauckham’s groundbreaking work, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony , is profoundly insightful, but the message of the book is hampered by the presupposition of Marcan priority. Ironically the place where this assumption perhaps does its most damage is in Bauckham’s discussion of the apostle Matthew…
The Protestant Reformation was defined by certain clarifying disagreements between the medieval Church and those who came to be known as Protestant Reformers. Chief among these was the nature of justification: whether one was justified by works, or by faith and works, or—as Martin Luther contended—by faith alone. Now over…
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A couple of weeks ago, I mused on whether Saussure would have agreed with Barr’s rejection of the idea that different mentalities are built into different languages. In his superb book on Saussure, Jonathan Culler provides further evidence that Saussure would not agree with Barr. Culler’s argument, to put it…
Gilles Emery writes concerning Thomas’s view of essence and person in the Trinity, defending Thomas against Rahnerian-style charges: “There is . . . not ‘derivation’ of persons from an essential act in Thomas. This observation clarifies anew the structure of the treatise on God: the distinction of the two sections…
Bonaventure wrote: “Behold, therefore, and observe that the highest good is unqualifiedly that than which no greater can be thought. And this good is such that it cannot rightly be thought of as non-existing, since to exist is absolutely better than not to exist.” So far, so Anselmian. Then Bonaventure…
The “seven-eyed” stone in Zechariah 3:9 has been variously interpreted - for example, as the crown on the head of the high priest Joshua (the seven eyes being the letters engraved on the crown), as the kingdom of God, as a stone with seven “springs” (in Hebrew, the same word…
Babylon was considered a holy city in the ancient world, its kings consecrated by power given by Marduk. This is the reason the Persians destroyed the temple of Esagila and deported the statue of Marduk to Persia (or, by some accounts, melted it down) when the Babylonians revolted against Persian…
Postmodernism has, we are told, “decentered” the modern self, that unified, sovereign, isolated, godlike “thinking thing” discovered by Rene Descartes. The postmodern self is not single but multiple; not sovereign but controlled by external forces; not isolated but “embedded” in the world and in relation; not godlike, but human, all…
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