Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For many people Christmas comes on December 25 and is over December 26. The tree is taken down along with the lights and the other decorations, and everyone begins setting the house in order for the new year. No more Christmas hymns. No more celebrations (well, until New Year’s Eve).…
The Ascension and the Incarnation should not be disconnected in our Christmas thinking or celebrations. As N.T. Wright notes, the ascension is "a central and vital feature without which all sorts of other things start to go demonstrably wrong. . . . where the ascension has been ignored or misunderstood,…
“In the Word was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness.” Thus John describes the incarnation of the Son. He comes as the living and life-giving light of the world. That’s good news. In the beginning, God spoke and light shone…
Christmas is all about Jesus. The angels announce Jesus’ birth, shepherds and wise men come to see Jesus, Herod wants to kill Jesus. We occasionally think of the Father who sent the Son, but we keep returning to the Son made flesh in Bethlehem’s manger. Meanwhile, as always, the Spirit…
Christmas is about many things, but one of the chief things revealed in the gospel of Christmas is the humility of God. We don't often think of humility as an attribute of God. If God is glorious and exalted, we think, He must be haughty and proud and self-centered. We…
John famously begins his Gospel with a piece of theology: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Matthew starts with a genealogy. John celebrates Advent with a hymn, Matthew with a list. For John, Jesus is the Word of creation…
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Leo Oppenheim ( Ancient Mesopotamia , 191-2) observed that the “difference that separates the sacrificial rituals in [Mesopotamia and the West] is the ‘blood consciousness’ of the West, its awareness of the magic power of blood, which is not paralleled in Mesopotamia.” Burning was another key difference: “The Old Testament…
Too much of the discussion of nature and the supernatural is conducted in the idiom of Aristotle rather than the Bible. Most obviously, for Scheeben, Rahner, and even de Lubac (though to a lesser extent), the issue is framed as a question concerning the constitution of human “nature” or the…
Israel was forbidden to eat serpent-like creatures who were in the curse-prosecuting dust, crawling on their “bellies” like the snake in the garden (Leviticus 11:42; cf. Genesis 3:14). Christians believe that was not a permanent prohibition. In the new covenant, all foods are available, even serpentine ones (Acts 10-11). Why…
Hosea (2:14-20) allegorizes the exodus as a love story. Yahweh lures Israel from Egypt to the wilderness, speaks to her heart, becomes her ‘ish (man) and no longer her Baal (lord, or Baal). Yahweh is promising to take Israel out to the wilderness for a second honeymoon, but that implies…
A. Buckler summarizes the evidence for what he describes as “non-Levitical” defilements in the book of Leviticus ( Studies in Sin and Atonement , 269): “In Jeremiah and Ezekiel idolatry defiled the land of God, and in Leviticus all the enormities of the Canaanites defiled the country and would have…
The late Mary Douglas observed in Leviticus as Literature (75) that the list of animal organs for sacrificial animals is very selective: “it is interesting to note how very few items of anatomy receive any mention at all. Conspicuously missing in these chapters is any express mention of neck, heart,…
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