Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Thus says the Lord: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more” (Jer 31:15). The Night of the Hunter belongs on every Christian’s Christmas list. My family has even…
One important part of Jesus's birth narrative is the presence of angels. The angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary, announcing that she would bear a son. And then, on the night Jesus was born, a whole host of angels appeared to the shepherds. Angels are mysterious creatures to us.…
I was settled nicely into my chair and listening to the conversation in an undergrad religion seminar, my last required course to graduate. Though a few Christians sat scattered around the room, the course itself was dedicated to poking holes in traditional understandings of the Bible: our readings deconstructed notions…
God’s symbols belong to Him and to His people. They are constantly at work in the world, including the world of film, music, painting, architecture, and other artforms. You cannot escape God’s symbols or the meaning He has woven into the created order. Artists use and borrow God’s symbols, whether…
For centuries, Christians identified Israel in the Old Testament as a single, literal ethnic group, often called “the Jews.” Even supersessionists – those who believed the Church superseded Israel – assumed the clear-cut, technical definition of “Israel” in the Bible is the ethnic group. However, a deeper dive into Genesis,…
Misreading Intent In the opening verses of Matthew 11, the reader is confronted immediately by John the baptizer who has been imprisoned since 4:12. John poses a question to Jesus, inquiring from prison as to whether or not he is Israel’s awaited Messiah or if they should anticipate another: “Are…
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Verse 8 returns to some of the concerns of verse 1. Evil men meditate on violence (v. 1), and they also calculate, plot, and deliberately work out how to do evil (v. 8). This, again, is not simple foolishness or naïvete. This is deliberate, planned evil. In some passages the…
Barth insists that the center of the New Testament is Jesus, and that without Him there is nothing to be said. The list found in 1 Corinthians 1:30 - wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption - “become a meaningless statement in spite of the high content of its predicates” without Jesus. For…
Not according to Barth ( CD 1.2) Anselm does not move from the possibility of incarnation to its reality, but instead throughout his argument assumes the reality he’s attempting to understand: “his method cannot be called rationalistic, because of all the decisive elements by which he proves that the incarnation…
INTRODUCTION Back in 22:20, Solomon writes that he has written “excellent things” to his son. Waltke, following other commentators, suggests that the word for “excellent” is better understood as a number, thirty. Thus, Solomon asks rhetorically, “Have I not written to you thirty sayings?” Those thirty sayings are contained in…
Jones again, commenting on the different treatment of Jews and Christians by the Roman government: “The Jews were a race who practised the traditional worship of their ancestors, and had at an early date, while still a political unit, obtained from Rome legal recognition of their peculiar practices. With their…
A.H.M. Jones notes that most of the considerable religious fervor of the third and fourth centuries was devoted to other-worldly, escapist religion. That makes the triumphalism of Constantine’s Christian faith all the most striking. Constantine regularly expresses the belief that service to the Supreme God, the Christian God, will guarantee…
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