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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Isaiah’s promise that strangers and foreigners will tend flocks, farm, and maintain vineyards for Israel (61:5) makes it sound like the nations will do the menial work while Israel lives in cultured leisure. I suspect something else is in view. Flocks, grain, and wine are liturgical materials in the Hebrew…
The anointed Servant proclaims Jubilee - liberty to captives (Isaiah 61:1; cf. Leviticus 25:20). Jubilee gives not only freedom from debt-slavery but a return to ancestral property. Liberty takes physical form in possession of land. So Isaiah is still talking about Jubilee when he promises “double” in the land (v.…
Isaiah 61 closes with a brief song, apparently sung by the anointed Servant of verse 1. He is dressed up as a glorified Adam in a new garden that teems with righteousness and praise. The servant is vested and robed, an appropriate sequel to the anointing. That is enough to…
In his contribution to Sacrifice in Religious Experience , Tsvi Abusch observes that the center of Mesopotamian cult was not the killing or burning of an animal, nor the festive meal that often followed sacrifice. The central event was feeding the god: “Food was placed before the god and consumed…
The war in heaven (Revelation 12:7-12) looks like an even contest. On the one side stand Michael and his angels and on the other the dragon and his angels (v. 7). But the text is organized to show that the two sides are not as symmetrical as they initially seem:…
There is war in heaven (Revelation 12), and Michael casts the dragon from heaven to earth. Good thing for heaven; not so good for earth, because the dragon comes down enraged and begins to attack the mother and her children. But the dragon is eventually cast out of earth too,…
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