Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Evangelistic Message to the Uninformed: 1 Timothy 3.14-16 Even though this is written as a sermon for delivery, and even though it was preached in a homiletics class, I decided I can’t post it as a sermon because it was not truly preached at a place where nonchristians wanted to…
If we only read the Gospels of Mark and Luke, we might get the impression that Jesus’ ascension was on resurrection Sunday. Matthew speaks of going to Galilee but he does not put things into a clear time frame. John shows us that Jesus appeared to the disciples eight days…
The most cursory glance at the history of Western literature reveals that it has been deeply influenced by the Bible. Some of the greatest classics of Western literature draw their plots, characters, and ideas largely from Scripture; Dante’s Divine Comedy and Milton’s Paradise Lost are two of the most notable…
Few themes emerge as profoundly and persistently in the streams of biblical narrative as the conflict between light and darkness, and the juxtaposition of humanity with monstrosity. These themes not only weave through the fabric of Scripture, emerging in stories from Genesis to Revelation, but also stitch together the human…
In John Wenham’s work, Easter Enigma , he devotes an entire chapter to Mary Magdalene, which is rephrased and summarized here. 1 One of the interesting things that Wenham said was that Mary Magdalene was the second “most favored woman in the Bible.” 2 He adds, “Yet apart from a…
God made man to live in a larger relational context, and even in high rebellion, man cannot escape his created nature. Instead, that nature takes revenge on rebellious man. Autonomous and alone, the self craves absolution but recognizes no authority that might give it; it thirsts for glory but rejects…
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The harlot of Revelation 17 is dressed like a priest - robes of blue and scarlet, precious stones, an inscription on her head. So is the bride of Revelation 21: She is a city adorned with precious stones with streets of gold. Why would a female city be dressed like…
In an aside, John informs us that the angel measuring the walls of new Jerusalem measures according to human measurements (measure of man), which are also angelic measurements (Revelation 21:17). One of my students, Kameron Edenfield, suggests that this is another indication late in Revelation that angels and humans have…
Rebecca Maloy’s Inside the Offertory: Aspects of Chronology and Transmission is mainly about Gregorian chant in the offertory, but early on she summarizes current opinion regarding the origins of the offertory. Contrary to some earlier liturgical historians, “A lay offering during the liturgy of the early church . . .…
Contrary to popular impressions, racial ideology does not constitute the center of Afrikaner nationalism, according to Donald Akenson’s God’s Peoples: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster , a study of the modern afterlife of biblical covenant theology. Racial beliefs did not constitute the “central vaulting arch” of…
Revelation loomed large in the political conflicts of seventeenth-century England. On every side, the images of whore and bride were deployed to defend one church and condemn another. Una and Duessa in Spenser are one version of this battle. According to Esther Richey’s The Politics of Revelation in the English…
In her contribution to To Train His Soul in Books: Syriac Asceticism in Early Christianity , Susan Harvey describes how the “emergence of the ascetic single-sex household - and later its organized communal form, the monastery - appears to have brought a sea change in the (male) awareness of and…
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