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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O’Regan ( Theology and the Spaces of Apocalyptic , 113-4) deftly captures the limits and use of Derrida. Limits first, and there are severe: Derrida is not “adequate for Christian theology,” he argues, because “as theo -logy, there is presumtively a reality whose very nature it seems it to self-disclose,…
Christian reception of the work of Walter Benjamin is often set in the context of Christian reception of Jewish messianism or Jewish apocalyptic. In a brilliant summary of Benjamin, Cyril O’Regan ( Theology and the Spaces of Apocalyptic , 61-8) contests this characterization. Despite Benjamin’s claim that he is settled…
The Spirit is upon the Servant of Yahweh (Isaiah 61:1), and where the Spirit is, there is new creation (cf. Genesis 1:2). The mission of the Servant is fittingly described in a complex of seven infinitive clauses (vv. 1-3): A) Yahweh anointed Me 1) to proclaim good news to the…
The Servant of Yahweh is anointed to proclaim the “acceptable year of Yahweh” and the “day of vengeance of our God” and to comfort the mourners (Isaiah 61:2). These are not opposites. They proclaim the same fact from different angles, and the connection is underscored by a Hebrew play on…
The word “liberty” ( deror ) is rarely used in the Hebrew Bible, and the terms for its use are set by Leviticus 25, the laws of Jubilee. There, liberty includes the freeing of slaves, as whenZedekiah proclaims liberty to slaves (Jeremiah 34:8-16). But the specific liberty that is proclaimed…
Some months ago, I wrote a brief piece on the “tragedy” of conversion .I used the word “tragedy” in the sense I develop in Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, & Hope In Western Literature . The word describes a conception of history and metaphysics in which the original is by definition…
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