Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The idea of atonement is not a distinctly Christian, or even Hebraic, concept. It also makes an appearance in ancient Greek thought (among other places). The Greek tradition is by no means monolithic, so it isn’t possible to speak of a “Greek” concept of atonement. But there are certain commonalities…
As we know, there are seven deadly or capital sins. Prior to the list of the seven deadly sins there was a list of eight evil thoughts or demons. It was made by an Eastern monk, Evagrius Ponticus. When the list was transposed to the West, one evil thought was…
Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is one of those epistles in Scripture to which pastors and teachers resort to show the church everything that it shouldn’t be . There is, of course, good reason for this. The Corinthian church was filled with all sorts of problems. Personality cults (i.e., factions),…
Today is Ash Wednesday , and as many Christians of the Protestant formerly "low church" persuasion are reacquiring some of the good and ancient practices of the church, one question in particular comes to the front: to ash or not to ash? That is, while many of us are finding…
A murder of tweets. To observe Lent rightly, we have to be persuaded that we already stand in God’s favor. Ash Wednesday reminds us to number our days. It helps us gain a heart of wisdom (Psalm 90:12). We keep Easter to manifest and deepen our prior share in resurrection.…
Dale C. Allison, Jr., The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993). Dale Allison 1993 book is a superb case study in the New Testament's use of the Old. Though he focuses on only a single typology (Christ as a new Moses) in only a single gospel (Matthew), Allison's…
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The terms “ceremony” and “ritual” became sneer-words nearly as soon as they were introduced into English and other European languages, according to Edward Muir’s Ritual in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2005): “Around the turn of the sixteenth century, as Thomas Greene has persuasively shown, ‘a kind of crisis confronted the…
Richard Davidson, writing in the Andrews University Seminary Studies (Spring 2004), shows that the restoration of the world after the flood follows the creation week: 1. Spirit/wind, Gen 1:2; 8:1 2. Division of waters, 1:6-8; 8:1-5 3. Dry land and plants, 1:9-13; 8:5-12 4. Lights, 1:14-19; 8:13-14 5. Animals (birds…
Some random thoughts on Jonah, inspired by a conversation with my student, Brillana McLean. 1) The first chapters of Jonah seem to follow something of an exit-and-return story. Jonah gets in a boat and crosses some water; he is cast out and is swallowed by the waters and by a…
INTRODUCTION Individual angels, particularly the angel of Yahweh, appear regularly in the Old Testament (Genesis 16:7, 11; Exodus 14:19; Numbers 22:23-24; Judges 13:3; 2 Kings 1:3, 15). Occasionally, individual angels are named (Daniel 8:16; 10:13, 21). Far less frequently, groups of angels appear (Genesis 19:1 [a pair]; 28:12; 32:1; Job…
If postmodern theorists are Marxists, they are Marxists of a particular stripe, in that their Marxism is crossed by Nietzschean pessimism. They believe that power struggles are at the center of history but no longer believe that these power struggles will end in an ideal classless society. Revelations concerning the…
Novels, we say, are long prose fictions, but general the terms of that definition are left unexamined. What is “prose” after all? What, Catherine Gallagher wants to ask, is fiction? And how did fictionality become established as the matter-of-factly defining characteristic of the novel. It is often assumed that “fiction”…
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