Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
“We have a God who hides things because He loves to be sought out, chewed out and found out.” As Christians, we are rightly taught that we must not question God’s Word. The problem is that the Scriptures record many things which appear to have been given to us for…
The book of Revelation is a liturgy. John begins “in the Spirit” on the “Lord’s day” (1:10). Jesus appears, and Jesus tells him to record messages to seven churches, words of encouragement and rebuke, like the call to worship and confession at the beginning of a Christian liturgy. In chapter…
In my previous posts, I looked at the theme of creation as it is found in a sequence of psalms devoted to Yahweh’s Kingship (Psalms 93-100). Among other matters, these psalms declare that when the Kingdom of Israel’s God comes, it is the Kingdom of the world’s own Creator .…
The church in Corinth was a pastoral nightmare. Factionalism, sexual immorality, incipient syncretism, using the church as a stage for self-promotion, and denial of the final resurrection were just some of the problems. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church, he confronts each of these problems directly and in…
The first chapters of the Word of God have a poetic rhythm. This is used to discredit their accuracy as historical narrative, but the truth is that these same rhythms continue far beyond the book of Genesis. In fact, the later texts shed light on the frustratingly succinct account of…
Mr. Martian: What’s that there? Mr. Edison: (Edison holds up a standard, 60 watt lightbulb). It’s a lightbulb. Mr. Martian: A “lightbulb” you say? What exactly is a “lightbulb”? Mr. Edison: A lightbulb is an object used to illuminate a dark area, say a room. It’s made primarily of filament…
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Davies and Allison point out in their commentary on Matthew that Mark uses the verb DIAKONEIN in 1:13 to describe the angel’s ministry to Jesus after His temptation. The word connotes “table service,” and they suggest that Jesus, hungered by fasting, feeds on the bread of angels, as Israel had…
Every week, we pray that our Father will not lead us into temptation, and that He will deliver us from evil. This is part of the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, and the petition is reinforced by the promise of James: “Let no one say when he is…
Jesus’ temptation is a preview of the entire gospel. Jesus, the Son of God, becomes flesh, and enters the wilderness of this world, the wilderness that Israel has become. He assumed all human frailties and undergoes all the tests that Israel and all humanity have endured. He is “tested” or…
Shameless plug follows. Jim Manney of Loyola Press was generous enough to ask permission to reprint my essay, “Why Protestants Can’t Write” to The Best Catholic Writing, 2007 . As if I didn’t have enough troubles. The volume includes essays by real Catholics like Pope Benedict XVI (more Catholic than…
The popular picture of Calvin suggests that he was a theologian of truth, and that he subordinates God’s goodness and beauty fairly radically to His truthfulness. In his recent Notre Dame Press book on Calvin’s theology of Word and Image, Randall Zachman thinks otherwise: “I argue, on the contrary, that…
It is often thought that Hermeticism faded during the Christian Middle Ages, to be revived in the 15th century with Ficino’s translation of the Corpus Hermeticum . One of the central claims of Florian Ebeling’s The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus (Cornell, 2007) is that this is misleading. There was…
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