Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Jonah is Paul’s typological opposite. Indeed, in the whole Old Testament, it would be difficult to find a more perfect foil to Paul than Jonah. Whereas Paul crosses the sea to enact God’s saving purposes for the Gentiles, Jonah crosses the sea to avoid bringing Gentiles God’s mercy. For that…
Years ago, I realized that if my children wanted to feel like their house was a home, I needed to be intentional about making our physical shelter a place of spiritual refuge. I began to see the Holy Spirit as the indwelling person of the Trinity—the one who makes His…
When the crowds encircle Christ in Solomon’s Porch during the Festival of Dedication, they charge him: “tell us boldly who you are!” 1 They do not draw-up to him to with excited anticipation as they did earlier in the Gospel, 2 instead they flank him like a gang of wolves.…
1 In Deuteronomy 7:1-5, Moses wrote: When Yahweh your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations…
Every Advent witnesses the gruesome reanimation of the voice that whispers “you know , Christmas is just a pagan holiday…” with that sort of conversational ellipsis that does not so much invite further reflection but halts and forecloses it. The claims are several and equally spurious: Jesus wasn’t born on…
Abraham's life in Genesis is a series of trials. He travels hundreds of miles from his family into a new land, flees from a famine into the hands of a king who takes his wife, and after returning, has to rescue his brother from a war. He's involved with two…
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A student, Sara Whear, noted the inclusio around Galatians 6: Those who are “spiritual” restore one who is caught in a trespass (v. 1) matches the blessing on the “spirit” in v 18. “Bear one another’s burdens” matches Paul’s claim that he “bears the brand-marks of Jesus” (vv. 2, 17).…
A student of mine, Brian Marr, has produced a fascinating study of the literary and structural features of Acts 6-9. One of the things that emerges from Brian’s study is the way Luke highlights parallels between Stephen and Saul, making Saul/Paul a new Stephen, destined for a future martyrdom that,…
Take a look at the addendum to Mark Horne’s introduction to Romans at the Trinity House site.
At the beginning of February , I noted that Good Republicans who are accommodating to current trends in liberal sexual politics are going to help Democrats marginalize Bad Republicans (the religious right). At the New York Daily News James Kirchick simultaneously reports on the latest from the Good Republicans and…
Jesus’ sufferings could not have been the most painful of all because, as the Stoics say, moral virtue mitigates pain and Christ was virtuous. Thomas responds to this objection (III, 46, 6) by insisting that the Stoics are wrong: “the Stoics held all sadness to be unprofitable, they accordingly believed…
A few weeks ago, I noted (citing Galatians 4) that Paul does not observe the common Protestant stricture on drawing doctrinal conclusions from types and allegories. Not surprisingly, the same is true of Thomas. Thomas answers the question of whether Christ ought to have suffered on the cross ( ST…
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