Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Below is an excerpt from Mark Horne’s manuscript from his forthcoming commentary on Ephesians, specifically on Paul’s reference to Christians as “saints” (Ephesians 1:1). “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus.” Paul greets…
There was nothing in the ark except the two tablets that Moses put there at Horeb, where the LORD made a covenant with the people of Israel, when they came out of Egypt (2 Chronicles 5:10). When Solomon finally brought the ark of the covenant to the finished temple in…
In As You Like It , Shakespeare famously describes the seven ages of a man’s life. The division of man’s life into stages is not an invention by Shakespeare, nor merely a common medieval artifice, but an expression of the real journey taken in life. Shakespeare seems to divide up…
Is there a chief characteristic which best illumines the image of God in Man? What is it exactly that makes Man as a lens through which to see God? Moses thoughtfully and deliberately escorts the reader to the characteristic showcased above all else: humility. Though much ink has been spilled…
Note: This essay is adapted from a talk delivered at the Howell E. Jackson Committee conference on “Foundations of Baptist Education,” held at Union University, Oct. 4-5, 2024. It’s no secret that evangelicals are converting to High Church traditions, a term I will use to refer to Anglo-Catholicism, Roman Catholicism,…
In recent years, there has been a flurry of conversions from Protestant Christianity towards Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, at least in part due to their supposed early church heritage relative to Protestantism. In the words of Rod Dreher, a former Methodist who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, “Many evangelicals seek…
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The account of the interactions between Elisha and the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4) includes several episodes, but it is a unified narrative, arranged as a modified chiasm: A. Shunammite woman prepares an upper room for Elisha, 4:8-11. B. Elisha promises the woman a son, 4:12-17 (“Call this Shunammite,” v…
There are some problems in Theodore Jennings’s Outlaw Justice (note my comments here ). But there are many, many insights in Jennings’s consistently political reading of Romans. On the Spirit’s intercession (135), for instance, he writes, that “the traditional translation, [the Spirit] ‘helps us,’ is, I think, flat wrong -…
The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). We hear that, and translate it into: “We do sinful acts; God punishes us with death; the ‘wage’ sin pays is death.” As Lloyd Gaston hints in Paul and the Torah , that doesn’t fit the way Paul uses the word “sin,”…
In his contribution to Galatians and Christian Theology , Oliver O’Donovan explores the flesh-Spirit opposition in Paul’s theology. He observes that flesh is associated with the law and with the elements, and glosses: “A moral law with multiple demands enslaves us. That is the truth of polytheism, explored long ago…
The locust plague that John sees coming from the abyss sounds like an army, chariots and horses rushing into battle (Revelation 9:9). Locusts that sound like chariots have appeared already in Joel (2:5), and the voice of horses is the voice of cherubim (Ezekiel 1:24; 3:13; 10:5). The locust horde…
There’s an enormous amount of chronological information in the Bible, but it is rare for Scripture to date an event by day, month, and year together. It happens at the completion of major construction projects, when worlds are completed - the world of the tabernacle (Exodus 40:17), the temple (2…
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