Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For many people Christmas comes on December 25 and is over December 26. The tree is taken down along with the lights and the other decorations, and everyone begins setting the house in order for the new year. No more Christmas hymns. No more celebrations (well, until New Year’s Eve).…
The Ascension and the Incarnation should not be disconnected in our Christmas thinking or celebrations. As N.T. Wright notes, the ascension is "a central and vital feature without which all sorts of other things start to go demonstrably wrong. . . . where the ascension has been ignored or misunderstood,…
“In the Word was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness.” Thus John describes the incarnation of the Son. He comes as the living and life-giving light of the world. That’s good news. In the beginning, God spoke and light shone…
Christmas is all about Jesus. The angels announce Jesus’ birth, shepherds and wise men come to see Jesus, Herod wants to kill Jesus. We occasionally think of the Father who sent the Son, but we keep returning to the Son made flesh in Bethlehem’s manger. Meanwhile, as always, the Spirit…
Christmas is about many things, but one of the chief things revealed in the gospel of Christmas is the humility of God. We don't often think of humility as an attribute of God. If God is glorious and exalted, we think, He must be haughty and proud and self-centered. We…
John famously begins his Gospel with a piece of theology: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Matthew starts with a genealogy. John celebrates Advent with a hymn, Matthew with a list. For John, Jesus is the Word of creation…
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Protestants have often been charged with promoting an individualist reading of Scripture, what with our confession of sola scriptura . That charge, I submit, arises from a misunderstanding of what the Bible is. In Psalm 119:24, the Psalmist declares his delight in the “testimonies” of Yahweh, and adds that these…
Greeks have a reputation for Apollonian rationality and calm, but that’s at best only part of the story. In the NYTBR , Caroline Alexander describes the Dionysian underside of classical Greece: “On Mount Lykaion (‘wolf mountain” in Arcadia, annual traditions honoring Zeus re-enacted a seminal rite of human sacrifice. In…
Richard Beck responds to my review of his Slavery of Death at the Trinity House site.
Mark W. Elliott’s Engaging Leviticus is a compendium of historical commentary on the book of Leviticus. Organized chapter-by-chapter, Elliott draws together patristic, medieval, and modern commentators, mostly Christian but including some Jewish commentators along the way. That organization creates some difficulties for the reader. Elliott’s book is packed with information,…
Origen interpreted the instructions about leprosy (Leviticus 13-14) as an “anatomy of spiritual disease” (Elliott, Engaging Leviticus , 132): “There are six types of spiritual plague, which can be taken as three pairs of types - each pair composed of disease that is curable (in this life) and incurable (in…
I want to talk about death. No, the flowers haven’t confused me. I’m aware that this is a wedding and not a funeral, but still: I intend to talk about death. What I want to talk about is real death. I’m not using the word metaphorically. I want to talk…
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