Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
There’s something about joy that is infectious. And occasionally, we all have the opportunity to be in someone’s presence who is so happily engaged in their work, so joyous in their pursuits, that we want to learn from them. We want to know where that joy comes from and attain…
Jesus has told us that He intends all nations to be discipled. Nations. Not just individuals. All nations as theocracies. That being the case, the Church exists for the life of the world. Being baptized is not only a matter of becoming part of a new family, it is also…
Harold Bloom’s essay on Macbeth includes the kind of penetrating insights that make Bloom the great Shakespearean scholar that he is, but it also includes his typical and intense anti-Christian bias. “If Lear was pre-Christian, then Macbeth is weirdly post-Christian. There are, as we have seen, Christian intimations that haunt…
Revelation 16 is a day of atonement text. The tabernacle of the testimony has been opened (15:5). The angels who receive the bowls are clothed in linen (15:6), the clothing of the high priest when he goes into the sanctuary on the day of atonement (Leviticus 16:4). The temple is…
From time to time, when I’ve lectured on how to read the Bible, I’ve used art-music as one example thereof. When we listen to a simple folk song, we hear the same melody over and over again, but this is not how composers write "high" music. Let me amplify. A…
"For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea-monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:40). Some reflections on Jonah’s Big Fish have led to the following essay. Let me…
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In a 2006 Pro Ecclesia review of Lamin Sanneh's Whose Religion Is Christianity? Emmanuel Katongole claims that Sanneh continues to allow geopolitical concerns to shape his understanding of African Christianity: “although Sanneh reads the growth of Christianity in Africa as a blessing to the West, he still shares the same…
The word “spring” (Gr. pege ) is used five times in the book of Revelation. Each time, it is linked with the word “water” (Gr. hudor ), but with slight variations. Twice the phrase is “spring(s) of the water of life” (7:17; 21:6, where the word is singular), and three…
W ith everyone abuzz with the latest Pew findings, one can hardly wait for the publication later this year of Robert Wuthnow's Inventing American Religion . Polls haven't always, of course, played so prominent a role in our understanding of American religion as they do today. They have not always…
In his contribution to Three Faiths, One God , Jacob Neusner explains that the Mishnah answered the question, With no temple, is Israel still holy? The Mishnah's answer was Yes, but then it had to explain how it was so: “Israel indeed is holy, and so far as the media…
Much of Revelation is overtly structured by sequences of seven. Even when the seven sections are not enumerated, heptamerous structuring devices are prominent. It's there in Revelation 12-15, for instance. The section is enclosed by references to the opening of the heavenly temple (11:19; 15:6), and within that frame there…
David Chilton points out ( Days of Vengeance , 359-60), this central section itself has an intriguing structural significance, linking to the scene of the Lamb in heaven (5:6-11): Revelation 5 Revelation 14 I saw a Lamb standing (v. 6) I looked, and behold, a Lamb was standing (v. 1)…
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