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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A trolley careens out of control. If you push the fat man in front of the trolley, you can save the lives of five people, including two children, but the fat man will die. What do you do? The typical answers people give, oddly, depends on whether the question is…
I begin with two fundamental objections to R. Alan Streett’s Subversive Meals , a study of early Christian meal practices in the context of Greco-Roman banquets and the Roman empire. First, Streett takes the Roman banquet as the primary context for understanding Christian meal practices. I insist that Judaism and…
Jennings observes, as many have, that the New Testament says a great deal about God overcoming our enmity to Him ( Transforming Atonement , 127). He overstates his case, because the Bible, including the New Testament, also has much to say about the wrath of God. But his point stands,…
Reflecting on Paul’s Eucahristic teaching in 1 Corinthians 10-11, Theodore Jennings writes ( Transforming Atonement , 162): “To see the force of [Paul’s] argument, one need only ask in what ways the manner of assembling as communities of faith serves to demonstrate and exacerbate differences of wealth or prestige, of…
Scot McKnight ( A Community Called Atonement , 75-6) observes that the prophecy of Joel 2 that is fulfilled at Pentecost is a prophecy of political catastrophe. Pentecost, he concludes is both justification - “God’s act of justifying and making His judgment clear” by the gift of the Spirit that…
Scot McKnight ( A Community Called Atonement ) sums up the atonement as “identification for incorporation” (107). Jesus identifies with us even to death so that He may incorporate us “in his destruction of death and the devil,” and into the perichoretic fellowship of the Triune God. That formulation enables…
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