Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I believe hymnals should be shorter than they are. Much shorter. 100 hymns at most, let’s say. I imagine that this will be a hard one to swallow for most of my readers, so I will attempt to bolster my argument as best I can. I can’t think of any…
Joshua is never called a king in the Bible. Yet while lacking the title, Joshua possesses the trappings of biblical kingship to a degree that it seems warranted to consider him a royal figure. There are lots of reasons for thinking this. In a 1981 Journal of Biblical Literature article,…
God speaks. He is not silent. He has designed humanity for reception of such communication and also to speak on His behalf. This speaking is not simply happenstance. It is not just a curious quirk about humanity. It is intrinsic to who we are that we speak and shape the…
One evening, years ago, home from college for Christmas break, I dreamt that I was playing the piano, passionately and well, in the church sanctuary beneath the parsonage in the renovated mansion in rural New Hampshire where my father was the minister. It was something of a lucid dream because…
I’m a big worrier. Always have been. Some of my earliest memories are of being anxious to the point of getting sick, sometimes for trivial reasons. My mind moves a million miles a minute, wondering what will happen in 5 minutes, or tomorrow, or next week, or in ten years.…
“The sun had gone up on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. And the LORD rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD from heaven, and he devastated those cities and the whole valley and all those dwelling in the cities and the growth of…
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In his commentary on the Johannine epistles, I. Howard Marshall notes A. Wurm’s thesis that John’s opponents were Jews. John’s opponents claim to know the Father, but deny Jesus is the Christ, a position that is certainly compatible with Judaism. Marshall dismisses Wurm’s thesis because John treats his opponents as…
Brown suggests that the structure of John’s gospel sets the pattern for the first epistle. His outline of the gospel is: A. Prologue, 1:1-18. B. Book of Signs, 1:19-12:50. C. Book of Glory, 13:1-20:29. D. Epilogue, ch. 21. And the first epistle: A. Prologue, 1:1-4. B. Part 1, 1:5-3:10 (God…
Raymond Brown notes that a number of scholars have identified the adversaries of 1 John as “Jews who denied that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God.” He finds this implausible since it’s hard to see how Jews could be “looked on as people who placed little emphasis on…
Raymond Brown notes that a number of scholars have identified the adversaries of 1 John as “Jews who denied that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God.” He finds this implausible since it’s hard to see how Jews could be “looked on as people who placed little emphasis on…
Peter van Inwagen distinguishes nicely between analytical philosophy as a “particular” form of philosophy and as a “universal” philosophical mode, and gives a tidily potted history: “As a particular, it is a confluence of streams of thought whose springs were in Britain, Austria, Poland and the United States. It has…
According to Paul Quinn (in the TLS), Alexander Theroux’s 700-page Darconville’s Cat was a product of jilted love. “Do your worst,” she had said when Theroux threatened to expose her in fiction, and he did: Theroux “encrypted his former lover’s name in acrostics and anagrams, and even cited her as…
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