Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Paul writes to Jews, “You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?” (Romans 2:22b) The English translation “rob temples” makes readers think of pagan temples. There was only one Temple for Israel, so robbing more than one would indicate other temples are in view. And if the Jews wanted to…
Two offerings Humanity’s first vocation involves guarding and serving the trees that emerge from the ground (Genesis 2:15). God provides these trees to humanity for food. A serpent appears and tempts the couple to eat from a special forbidden tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Humanity…
At the outset of the Torah (as Christians understand it), a triune God creates the heavens and earth over the course of a seven-day week. Why? What’s the connection between the three and the seven? Could a triune God have created the world over any period of time he chose?…
How relevant to the modern reader are the flying axe head of Deuteronomy 19:5 and the roof parapet of Deuteronomy 22:8? Indeed, how relevant were they to the daily lives of Israelites thirty-five hundred years ago? Suppose that accidental falls from rooftops were exceedingly uncommon in ancient Israel, or that…
1 For most of my life, the standing of the American church as a source of national social and political order was measured by reports from the front of the so-called “culture wars.” 2 Memory brings to mind battles over feminism and the ERA, so-called gay rights, the breakdown of…
But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel…’ And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the…
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Milbank charges that modern theology is characterized by false humility. Barth agreed with respect to Christology. In the name of a humble refusal to penetrate the veil of mystery around the incarnation, modern theologians have often renounced “beforehand all serious and responsible inquiry for the truth and every attempt to…
Barth ( CD 1.2) defends the church father’s from Herder’s charges of intellectualism and scholasticism. He sees two objections in Herder’s complaint: a “formal” objection to the meticulousness of patristic Christology, and a “material” objection that the fathers’ categories, especially that of “nature,” turned the incarnation and salvation into a…
When we read that ancient tyrants hired magicians to perform haruspicy with the entrails of dismembered infants, we immediately discount the record as propaganda. We know without needing to investigate that similar accusations against Jews in the Middle Ages had become a topos of anti-religious rhetoric. I’m not saying we…
Siloam was a pool (John 9), but Siloam also had a towner (Luke 13:4). That enhances the Edenic setting of the story of the man born blind in John 9. He is not only sent to wash in the water, he is sent to wash in the water by the…
Hamann suggests that the fear of God is what energizes: “When one considers how much strength, presence of mind, and speed, off which we are otherwise incapable, the fear of an extraordinary danger inspires in us: then one can understand why a Christian is so superior to the natural, secure…
Hamann hoped for a natural theology that would lead not to “the God of naked reason” but to “the God of Holy Scripture, who would show us that all [nature’s] treasures are nothing but an allegory, a mythological painting of heavenly systems - just as all historical events are the…
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