Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Summary In what follows, I will consider the “year-stamps” employed in Scripture, i.e., statements of the form, “Such-and-such an event took place in the Xth year of Y.” In the process, I will suggest some ways in which the Biblical narrative might relate to events in the extra-Biblical world, though…
In the first essay on the parable of the Prodigal Son, I suggested that the problems commentators and others encounter in interpreting Jesus three-part parable are not accidental. These are not just problems in our ignorance of cultural background. They are intentional features of the stories —stories designed to poke…
The story of the Prodigal Son is perhaps the most well-known story in the Bible. As others have observed, it may also be one of the most misunderstood. In two short essays, I will point out features of this story that are commonly neglected, aspects of Jesus’ parable that might…
The parable of Lazarus and the nameless rich man is not an independent story. It is part of a long context that begins in Luke 15:1, where Jesus is eating with tax collectors and sinners and the scribes and Pharisees grumble. In response to their hardheartedness, Jesus tells a three-part…
The Bible is written so that even when a reader cannot pick up on what might be deeper or more detailed aspects of a text, there is virtually always a message to be heard. In the ancient world, where the “reader” of Scripture would likely be a church official facing…
The distinction between garden (or vineyard) and field begins in Genesis 2. This relates to the ordering of the formless world. Plants of the field are contrasted with the garden planted by God in Genesis 2:5&8. Later on, under the Old Covenant the Israelites will be required to keep their…
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D avid Goldman ( It's Not the End of the World, It's Just the End of You ) claims that the Global South is marked by two trends: “the fastest rate of cultural extinction in history as well as the fastest rate of Christian evangelization in history.” The two, he…
Once, writes Mark Greengrass ( Christendom Destroyed ), “Nobility existed to defend Christendom by force of arms. Knighthood was the institution founded by the Church for the purpose” (123). Changes in the technology of warfare, along with the breakdown of unified Christendom, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, undermined that…
The peerage seems a near-eternal fixture of European society, but Mark Greengrass ( Christendom Destroyed ) argues that it was a creation of the early modern period. Dukedoms and peerages “hardly existed before 1500,” but a century or so later “titled aristocrats had mainly taken over as the means by…
Mark Greengrass ( Christendom Destroyed ) observes that nearly everyone in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe was in debt at one time or another during their lifetimes: “In Rome, for example, about 6 percent of the population found themselves imprisoned for debt in 1582 alone.” Court records provide further evidence: “Debt…
Os Guinness is utterly convincing, and characteristically wise, on many points in his 2014 The Global Public Square . He is right to emphasize that “many of the world's traditional settlements of religion and public life are floundering” (56). He refers to a UK case in which a woman was…
Andrew Walls ( The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History ) argues that Europe's encounter with non-Western peoples was one of the key factors in the secularization of Western politics. At a moment when Europe's hegemony over the world seemed secure, it came “by means of the expansion of the Iberian…
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