Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I thought it might be good to put this up here, since it is 14 years old, and itself reflects earlier discussion. From this you can see that we at BH have been considering this notion for quite some time. Clearly, the last word has not been said. — James…
Hopefully, my commentary on James will be out later this year. But here are a few chiasms for your consideration. I think the James 5 chiasm orginally came from Doug Jordan. The entire book of James is focused on how the pastors and leaders (“brothers”) of the church use their…
In my first post I noted that the parables of Jesus were not simply illustrative stories. They are really nothing like the kind of simple, homely illustrations that preachers often use to explain difficult concepts to their congregations. Just to be clear: there’s nothing wrong with illustrating one’s sermonic statements.…
Ephesians is often treated as a pure type example of the Pauline method that “the indicative preceds the imperative.” But what Paul does first is pray . Simply reading verse 3 and following involves readers in a prayer of thanksgiving to God–and much more so for those listening to the…
Yesterday, I took part with my oldest son in a church-sponsored city outreach project (not because I’m especially prone to such behavior but because my son has a Boy Scout requirement that this would help him meet). Before we were sent out on our various jobs, the leader gave a…
There is a scene in Prince Caspian , the second in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia that helps explain why it is we have four Gospels, that is four accounts of the Good News of Jesus Christ—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It is the account of Lucy’s longed-for experience…
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Gregory of Nyssa writes in his Life of Moses: “one limit of perfection is the fact that it has no limit . . . .Why? Because no good has any limit.” And in his treatise on perfection, he’s more expansive: “one ought not to be distressed when one considers this…
It’s not a new insight with me, but it came home with particular force recently: Paul says in Romans 3:28 that “we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of Torah.” To suppoose the point, he asks two rhetorical questions, the first expecting a negative…
David’s house dies and rises again several times in 1-2 Kings: After Athaliah kills the royal seed, Joash rises from the temple; after Samaria falls, the Lord saves Judah from Assyria through Hezekiah’s prayer; after Nebuchadnezzar takes Judah into exile, Jehoiachin is taken from prison and set at the king’s…
In his recent Simply Christian , NT Wright offers this clever retort to skeptical relativism: “Saying ‘It’s true for you’ sounds fine and tolerant. But it only works because it’s twisting the word ‘true’ to mean, not ‘a true revelation of the way things are in the real world’ but…
According to an AOL report, Greg Boyd has lost 1000 members of his church because he has refused to promote conservative political causes. According to the report, “he first became alarmed while visiting another megachurch’s worship service on a Fourth of July years ago. The service finished with the chorus…
According to an AOL report, Greg Boyd has lost 1000 members of his church because he has refused to promote conservative political causes. According to the report, “he first became alarmed while visiting another megachurch’s worship service on a Fourth of July years ago. The service finished with the chorus…
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