Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Christians get sex wrong when we start from the wrong end. We start from human desires, passions, biological drives and “needs.” These are treated as givens, as the base-line natural reality of human sexuality. Then we come to the Bible and find, to our surprise, that God places all kinds…
Why isn't Proverbs better known as the Bible's book on "manliness"? I use quotation marks because the term almost seems archaic in our present culture, along with "manhood." Perhaps the Church is too embarrassed to admit the Bible addresses that much attention to the topic. But another reason can be…
In certain evangelical Christian churches it is the tradition to exalt preaching above the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Ever since the rise of Revivalist preachers pushing for conversions, the practice has cast doubt upon the possibility of Baptism or the Lord’s Supper being a “means of grace”…
Perhaps one of the most stimulating sections of Yoram Hazony’s The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture addresses the question of how we are to discern the meaning of biblical narratives, especially how biblical narratives might present arguments of a more general nature. Hazony quotes John Barton’s remarks about the difficulty of…
In this slender volume, Joseph Minich (Ph.D. student at the University of Dallas) attempts to answer some of the deepest questions of human existence. With his honesty, his probing questioning, his wide reading, and his ability to plunge beneath superficial answers, he provides a helpful source of reflection for fellow…
A Closer Look at Noah’s Post-Flood Humiliation In Genesis 9:20-27 My wife is currently leading a Bible study through Genesis for a group of insatiable Bible students. Because she is a deep thinker and has a high view of inspiration, there is no passage she is unwilling to face head…
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A heavenly voice (Revelation 18:4) tells the saints to flee Babylon because her sins have “piled” to heaven (v. 5). That translation is questionable. The verb kollao means to “cling,” as a marriage man clings to his wife (Matthew 19:5; cf. 1 Corinthians 6:16-17; Genesis 2:24, LXX) or as dust…
Revelation 18:6 is made of two chiastic sentences that double back on each other. A. Pay B. her B'. as also she A'. paid. And: A. Double double according to her works B. in the cup C. she mixed C'. mix B'. her A'. double. Verse 7 says that she…
The opening description of Babylon in Revelation 18 suggests a city depopulated and repopulated. The people have been moved out, and in their place it has been infested with impurity. There are four categories of new inhabitants: demons and unclean spirits, unclean and abominable birds, and they are divided into…
Christian Faith , Brian Gerrish's new dogmatics, is well named, echoing as it does Schleiermacher's classic text. Gerrish is Schleiermachian in many ways, not least in his repetition of what has become, after Barth, one of Schleiermacher's most notorious gestures: His placement of the doctrine of the Trinity at the…
“Memory is the sine qua non of the creation of meaning,” writes Nicholae Babuts in his Literature and the Metaphoric Universe in the Mind . “Human beings are capable of interpreting the world because they remember not only the moments that have just elapsed, but also events that have taken…
In her contribution to Medieval Exegesis & Religious Difference , Nina Caputo analyzes Nahmanides' interpretation of the sons of God/daughters of men passage in Genesis 6. The notion that the passage was about angelic intercourse with humans was already current, but Nahmanides rejected it. He wrote, “The correct interpretation in…
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