Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I mentioned last month ( BH 82) in my essay "Like a Dove" that Genesis 8 is a recapitulation of Genesis 1. Let me explicate that assertion here. Of course, the world after the Flood is a new creation, so we may expect a recapitulation of the first creation. It…
The book of Esther is one of the most neglected of the books of the Bible. To be sure, sermons are preached on it, and commentaries have occasionally been written on it, but almost without exception Esther has been interpreted in isolation from the rest of Biblical history, chronology, and…
Dear Mr. ______, . . . Here is how I look at the geocentricity question. Since I don’t recall what I wrote you before, I may be repeating some things. 1. The Bible does not teach it. Biblical passages used to support the idea are being misinterpreted. My original paper…
Answer 4 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is often taken as a magnificent answer to the question, "What is God?" It reads: "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." Presbyterians are fond of praising this statement, preaching on it,…
The gospels tell us that at Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him "in bodily form like a dove" (Luke 3:22 & parallels). Biblically sensitive commentators have associated this event with three Old Testament parallels: (1) the hovering of the Spirit over the creation in Genesis 1:2; (2) the…
This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. (John 8:6) The story of the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:11) has been part of the canonical Christian Bible from its earliest…
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In The Second Shift (19), Arlie Hochschild points out that “the interplay between a man’s gender ideology and a woman’s implies a deeper interplay between his gratitude toward her, and hers toward him. For how a person wants to identify himself or herself influences what, in the back and forth…
Alexander Murray reviews Ronald Witt’s The Two Latin Cultures and the Foundation of Renaissance Humanism in Medieval Italy in the TLS , and has some high compliments for this sequel to In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni . He commends, for example,…
John 4: Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life. Jesus is never far from water. He turns water to wine, heals a paralytic at…
In many churches, the Sunday after Epiphany commemorates the baptism of Jesus. It is one of the moments when He shows Himself to the world. At the water, the Father declares Jesus to be His Son by giving the Spirit of sonship. When we were baptized, we received a share…
Prior to Cyril, McGuckin claims ( Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy , 224-5), Christian theology oscillated between an unstable “semitic” anthropology that understood human nature as a fragile, unstable combination of soul and flesh, and a philosophical “hellenistic” view that claimed that man was not truly anything…
John McGuckin dissents strongly from the notion that Cyril of Alexandria failed to do justice to the “full humanity” of Jesus ( Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy , 225-6). On the contrary, for Cyril, Jesus was the first fully human human. Denial that Cyril did justice to…
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