Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Blessing of the Father The narrative of the Exodus makes it clear that Yahweh is Israel’s Father. Moses is told to declare to Pharaoh that “Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, ‘Let my son go that he may serve me’” (Exodus 4:22-23). In contrast to…
When reading the Old Testament, the believer faces two dilemmas. First, there is a seemingly sharp discontinuity between the universal proclamation of the gospel to the whole earth and God’s singling out of the nation of Israel. Second, the New Testament says of Jesus that “there is no other name…
John 17 contains the longest prayer that we have from Jesus, and it shows us the intimate relationship between the Father and the Son in a way that few passages do. The prayer lays out the chiastic pattern noted by Athanasius (God became man so that man could become God),…
The following meditation on the incarnation is paraphrased and quoted from Karl Barth, The Doctrine of Reconciliation (Church Dogmatics, Vol. 4, Part 1) , pp. 185ff. In the incarnation, the eternal Son of God makes His way into a far country, and takes on the form of a servant. “But…
Peter says "baptism saves you" (1 Peter 3:21). Does the New Testament teach that "baptism justifies you"? I think the answer is Yes. That's a controversial answer, and demands some defense and explanation, but first some critical qualifications. No New Testament text states "baptism justifies you," so my argument will…
In his THI article “ Son of David, Son of Abraham ,” Peter Leithart notes that Matthew's genealogy “contains a summary of redemptive history.” This statement is only too true and one that deserves further elucidation. Biblos genese ō s. The first two words of Matthew's Gospel are usually translated…
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In his fascinating Rise of Christianity , Rodney Stark cites estimates that there were between 10,000 and 20,000 inhabitants of Jerusalem in the first century. Stark uses this to falsify Luke’s claims that there were 5000 Christians in Jerusalem (Acts 4:4) and “many thousands” of Jews (Acts 21:20): “Had there…
One Rhonda Wauhkonen discusses Nicholas of Lyra’s “Hebraic” semiotics and hermeneutics in a 1992 article on Chaucer. She begins by contrasting Augustine’s signum/res distinction to Lyra’s Hebraic viewpoint: “In the Hebrew system as evidenced in Scripture and as adapted by Nicholas, such stratification of signification did not exist, for the…
Nicholas of Lyra is known for his notion of a “double literal” sense to Scripture. For him, interpretation ad litteram includes both the historical and the doctrinal/christological senses, and he suggests that the ancient Hebrews could well have seen the Messianic sense as the literal sense. He also suggests that…
In Book 3 of Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais attributes an odd opinion to the 14th-century exegete, Nicholas of Lyra: “Pantagruel, having wholly subdued the land of Dipsody, transported thereunto a colony of Utopians, to the number of 9,876,543,210 men, besides the women and little children, artificers of all trades, and…
In Book 3 of Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais attributes an odd opinion to the 14th-century exegete, Nicholas of Lyra: “Pantagruel, having wholly subdued the land of Dipsody, transported thereunto a colony of Utopians, to the number of 9,876,543,210 men, besides the women and little children, artificers of all trades, and…
Steinmetz summarizes Thomas’s remarkably “NTWrightian” commentary on Matthew 20:1-16. While acknowledging an Origenist tradition that sees the hours as moments of an individual life, Thomas is more interested in the Irenaean tradition that interprets the parable in terms of redemptive history: “The hours mentioned in the parable are not stages…
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