Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Integrity seems to have two meanings. It can mean the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles. A man of integrity is a person of honour, rectitude and probity, truthful and trustworthy. Integrity also describes a state – the quality of being whole and undivided. If things are…
Get the Psalm 32 Translation here Psalm 32 is the first part of Ps. 32-33, ending with a call to praise that is answered by what follows. Ultimately the psalm needs to be considered as a whole, but what we call Psalm 32 does have its own structure and logic,…
You wouldn’t hit a man with glasses would ya? No, of course not. I’d hit him with a bat. In our culture of frivolity it is tempting for Christians to think that solemnity should be our defining attribute. The coarseness of the world impedes us from enjoying any sort of…
Taking a cue in my last post from early Christian apologetics, I suggested that if we wish to articulate and defend a doctrine of creation ex nihilo in contemporary theology, we would do well to offer a thick description of Yahweh’s divine monarchia (his sole rule or sovereignty). Rather than…
I’m not sure we really understand the insidiousness of unbelief. It is not merely to reject the gospel of Jesus, the existence of a Creator God, or to question biblical morality. At its core, unbelief is ingratitude, and by the very nature of this ingratitude, it must ultimately reject every…
Mark’s narrative of the baptism of Jesus is characteristically brief: “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him…
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James Jordan has suggested that the vision of new Jerusalem (Revelation 21:9-22:5) is arranged as a chiastic recasting of the creation week: A. Day 1: Light in the city, 21:10-11 B. Day 2: Boundaries and measurements of the city, 21:12-17 C. Day 3: Materials of the city, 21:18-21 D. Day…
The verb “show” ( deiknuo ) occurs eight times in Revelation, and the eight uses fall into a neat pattern. Twice at the beginning (1:1; 4:1) and twice at the end (22:6, 8), the verb is used with a generic object. God shows “things which must shortly take place” (1:1;…
In an essay on “barriers and bridges” in American religion, Stephen Warner emphasizes the role of music in building bridges, forging solidarity without requiring assent to a common set of propositions. He offers a florilegium of quotations from various scholars: “At an emotional level, there is something ‘deeper' about hearing…
William H. McNeill's Keeping Together in Time explores the role of “emotional bonding through rhythmic muscular movement” in history (52). The significance of the phenomenon occurred to him during military training in 1941: “A sense of pervasive movement in unison is what I recall; more specifically, strange sense of personal…
The final chapter of the Bible (Revelation 22:6-21) is a rapid series of speeches and dialogues, structured in fourfold parallelism. Each new section introduces a new speaker or speech with some form of “he said.” The speakers move from an angel to Jesus to the Spirit and bride. The chapter…
In a 2007 Bibliotheca Sacra article, Mark Hitchcock examines various theories about the identity of the seven heads of the beast in Revelation 17:9-11. It's been proposed that the number seven is purely symbolic of fulness, and that the heads are not to be identified with any historical characters. Hitchcock's…
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