Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the first post of this series, I proposed that the sacraments of baptism and communion are the nexus point for the evangelical and ecumenical movements. In the following post , I proposed a new orientation for ecumenism – a conciliarity of the cross – with the necessary confession of…
“Contextualization” is now, and has been for a long time, the buzzword for the day. 1 Missionary effort in non-Western countries is all about “contextualization” — making our communication of the Gospel, if not the Gospel itself, fit into the culture to whom we from the West speak. 2 There…
In my previous post , I highlighted the sacraments as the point of convergence between evangelicalism and ecumenism arguing that baptism and communion are presented in the New Testament as signs of the gospel that simultaneously enact and remember union with Christ and the unity of Christ’s body. I concluded…
Click HERE for Part I of this series. What does baptism have to do with culture? As I said in the previous essay, the short answer is “everything!” To begin with, baptism is baptism into Jesus’ death (Romans 6:3). Paul explains this as the crucifixion of the “old man” (“old…
In the accounts of our Lord’s nativity and early childhood, so familiar to us from many years of Advent and Christmas services, we often fail to recognize in them the gentle intimations of a greater nativity that is yet to come. The attentive ear, however, can discover in these passages…
Isaiah warns that Yahweh is coming to remove Judah’s leaders in every area of social, economic and political life so completely that there will be no one left to lead besides children (3:4) and women (v. 12). As Isaiah goes on, however, it becomes clear that the women of Judah…
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In his history of Christianity, August Neander distinguished between gnostics who arose from within Judaism and those whose inspiration came from “Oriental” modes of thought. Here is his description of the Jewish sources of gnosticism: In the following respect, all these Gnostics agree ; they all held . . .…
A few scattered notes from Jarl Fossum’s book examining the links between the figure of the “angel of Yahweh” in Samaritan theology and the “demiurge” of gnosticism. 1) Fossum points out that Simon Magus, legendarily the fountain of Gnosticism, venerated the Torah, and that some of the church Fathers said…
In a 2006 book on the origins of gnosticism, Carl B. Smith offers an alternative account of the connections of Judaism and gnosticism. According to the JETS reviewer: Smith “proposes that gnosticism arose in a social context of ‘alienated Judaism’ influenced by Greco-Roman and early Christian ideas in the aftermath…
In a book published in 1959, R. M. Grant attempted “to explain Gnosticism as arising out of the debris of apocalyptic-eschatological hopes which resulted from the fall or falls of Jerusalem.” According to a reviewer in Theology T0day , “Grant stresses the Jewish element which, as he rightly says, has…
Origen says that the Ophite demiurge had the face of a lion and was connected with Saturn, and this has led some scholars to conclude that Jaldabaoth was a combination of Baal and Kronos. John of Damascus says that the Phoenicians held Kronos to be a kind of demiurge, and…
According to Alfred Honig (writing in the late 19th century), the Ophite name for the demiurge, Jaldabaoth, comes from a Hebrew phrase meaning “child of chaos,” and the etymology goes back at least to the 1820s. Scholem argued, however, that the name was invented by a Jew and is a…
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