Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
References to the Son of Man coming on the clouds occur five times in the Synoptic Gospels. Three times such expressions appear in the parallel accounts of the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24:30; Mark 13:36; Luke 21:27). Then, in parallel accounts of Jesus’ trial before the leaders of Israel, such expressions…
Just what the difference is in the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and the New Testament is a question not so easily answered. The distinction is often said to be that in the Old Testament the Holy Spirit is on the believer, but in the New…
1. Introduction You should think of 1917 at church on Sunday. Why? Let me explain. There's one film every Oscar season which everyone seems to have watched—your parents, your colleagues, even your pastor. This year, it's 1917— Sam Mendes' WW1 epic following two British Tommies on a seemingly impossible quest…
This piece was originally part of the Bowyer response to the Theopolis series surrounding Professor McDermott’s essay, “Rethinking Israel.” For the sake of brevity, it was removed from the initial response, to be published as a standalone piece. As we’ve argued previously , we are strongly supportive of the right…
Richard Bauckham’s groundbreaking work, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony , is profoundly insightful, but the message of the book is hampered by the presupposition of Marcan priority. Ironically the place where this assumption perhaps does its most damage is in Bauckham’s discussion of the apostle Matthew…
The Protestant Reformation was defined by certain clarifying disagreements between the medieval Church and those who came to be known as Protestant Reformers. Chief among these was the nature of justification: whether one was justified by works, or by faith and works, or—as Martin Luther contended—by faith alone. Now over…
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Durkheim, on John Milbank's reading ( Theology and Social Theory , 63-4), attempted to socialize Kant. Comte had already argued that Kant anticipated relativism, since he knew that knowledge had to do with “one's environmental setting” and that “this principle made transcendent metaphysics impossible.” Biology and sociology were to make…
In his Bloodtaking and Peacemaking (180-1), his study of Icelandic society, William Ian Miller distinguishes between feuds and “other types of violence like war, duels, or simple revenge killings that involve no one beyond the killer and his victim.” While he recognizes the difficulties of definition, he lays out seven…
Lamech's song in Genesis 4 is today read as a taunt and a warning. “I have killed a man for wounding me,” he tells his wives, and a boy for striking me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy sevenfold” (Genesis 4:23-24). But there is another reading, one involving…
R. Chris Hassel has compiled a dictionary of every religion-related work he could find in Shakespeare's plays and poems. The entries in Shakespeare's Religious Language are usually divided into three parts - a definition, a compilation of Shakespeare's uses of the term, and references to contemporary or near-contemporary writers (Donne…
Ted Grimsrud's Instead of Atonement attempts to tells the “Bible's salvation story” without appeal to the “logic of retribution.” Sacrifice, he says, was not about retribution but about the worshipers grateful response to God's saving acts; it doesn't change God's attitude toward us, and neither does the death of Jesus.…
In The Anti-social Family , recently republished by Verso, Michele Barrett and Mary McIntosh lament that, for all the hubbub about changing gender roles, not all that much has changed: “A gross asymmetry in heterosexual relations remains, despite these improvements. Men still seek and are willing to pay for the…
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