Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
1 Chronicles 9:1 seems to bring the genealogies of 1 Chronicles to an end. The Chronicler has recorded the genealogy of the human race from Adam, focusing on the descendants of Abraham through Jacob. Summing it all up, he says, “So all Israel was enrolled by genealogies; and behold, they…
The “personalist” understanding of the Trinity, articulated most influentially in the work of John Zizioulas, has fallen on hard times. Recent scholars have attacked Zizioulas’s idea that Cappadocian Trinitarianism represented an ontological revolution, hammering on the distinction between divine and human personhood. Michel Barnes’s conclusion is the most drastic of…
Biblical Theology is often defined as the historical unfolding of God’s revelation, or of God’s revelation and of the history of his covenantal redemption and transformation of humanity and the world. In practice, Biblical Theology is usually broader than this, and also includes the study of literary structure and of…
We are made to be happy. Created to enter into the eternal joy of God, our whole being inclines to that end, but the fallen world has put forth barriers and by our own sin we bar ourselves from that endless delight, and death blinds us to that reality. Yet…
At the end of Revelation, John sees the heavenly city descending to earth. The city shines with the brilliance of God's glory, which lightens the nations, so that kings bring their glory to the city. This is not a vision of the final new heaven and new earth. It's a…
“No one has ever seen God,” writes John (John 1:18). If this is the case, then how can we speak about God? Some people say we actually cannot. Or at least we cannot speak about God positively, i.e. who He is. We can only say who or what God is…
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In a 2005 article, Daniel Van Slyke explores the use of sacramentum in non-Christian writers from the ancient world. He reiterates the common observation that the term is most often used in military contexts to describe the engagement of soldiers to military service. Livy, for instance, writes that during a…
John Milbank is no nominalist, yet in Beyond Secular Order he insists that the nominalists raised questions that could not simply be answered by a return to Thomas. He points to four questions: Do creatures stand “outside” God in any sense? Does analogy violate the law of non-contradiction (2 things…
My little post on Gender Arianism created some buzz. Some of the responses missed my argument. But that was partly my fault for making the argument so briefly and (perhaps) opaquely. Here's what I hope is a somewhat clearer statement of the argument. In Deep Comedy , I argued that…
It is widely believed that if the world is a causally closed system, then God cannot be involved in the world. He cannot introduce new information. William Dembski ( Being As Communion ) disputes the conclusion. He concedes that “causal closure in a deterministic universe precludes what may be called…
Arians say that the Son isn't eternal God, but a high-level creature. There is a twofold assumption behind Arianism: First, that the Absolute must be un-related. A related Absolute becomes relative to the one to whom it is related. Trinitarian theology rejected this premise and followed Scripture in affirming an…
In his Beginnings of Judaism , Shaye Cohen devotes a chapter to ancient usages of the meaning of the term ioudaizein . It appears only once in extant classical sources, once in the LXX of Esther, once in Paul, two times in Josephus. Most of the ancient uses are from…
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