Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Figure: Literary structure of the Garden narrative The Garden narrative describes God forming the adam , resting him in his presence, then provisioning for his appetites of food, vocation, and mate. It continues to describe a snake, the introduction of death, and humanity's expulsion from the garden. The pages of…
I’ve spent the last few years studying the theology of St. Irenaeus (d. circ. 200ad). In particular, I’ve been gripped by the way that Irenaeus consistently resisted the anti-body emphasis that emerged in later Christian theology. His eschatology is remarkably focused on the resurrection of the body, and the renewal…
Details of Jesus in Exodus 1:22-2:25 Although there are a great many Christ-types in the Old Testament, it is hard to overplay the obviousness of some that seem to necessarily rise to the top before others. One of these is Isaac, with his near sacrifice by his own father after…
What can we say about Cain's wicked sanctuary-city of Enoch? First that it was built with a brother's blood as its cornerstone. The Church is also built such, for Jesus was the younger brother of the whole Adamic race, slain by that company of older brothers because they hated Him.…
In Genesis 2:9 the ground brought forth trees good for food, delightful to view, and in two cases, life-giving or rule-bestowing. Adam, made of the ground (2:7), would by implication bring forth new trees, and thus trees and plants are among the symbols for human beings throughout the Bible. The…
One of the must fundamental teachings of the Bible and of the Christian religion is that man does not have life in himself. Man must get life from outside of himself, in order to maintain his life. The way this is done is through eating and drinking. Apart from life,…
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Sanballat hears about Nehemiah’s project of rebuilding Jerusalem after the exile, he becomes angry and mocks the Jews: “Can they finish in a day? Can they revive the stones from the heaps of dust even the burned ones” (Nehemiah 4:2). The taunt is theologically significant. “Finish” is kalah , the…
John describes the angel’s position in Revelation 10 in great detail. The angel straddles land and sea, but for some reason John thinks it important to record that the angels right foot is on the sea and left foot on the land. Assuming that the shoreline in question is the…
Several months ago, I wrote a First Things essay on the life and ministry of Pastor Tom Clark of Tri-City Covenant Church in Somersworth, New Hampshire. Tom died shortly after that essay appeared, but during his last days we were able to spend a couple of days listening to and…
Irene Gedalof argues in Against Purity that feminists have been too much in the grip of a binary logic that actually undermines feminism. What she has in mind is the notion that women can be defined in terms of a pure category of “Woman” or “Feminine.” On the contrary, women’s…
Brian Pennington’s Was Hinduism Invented? includes a brief outline of William Ward’s 1817 treatise on the History, Literature and Religion of the Hindoos . He describes the missionary Ward as one of the “first Europeans to adopt an ethnographic stance” (79). Pennington continues: “He turned from linguistic and textual studies…
David Wootton’s TLS review of Quentin Skinner’s Forensic Shakespeare is a primer on Elizabethan law and legal rhetoric. Wootton tells us, “We tend to think rhetoric is about using figures of speech, but that was only a small part of the orator’s training, which relied both on textbooks inherited from…
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