Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
Many years ago, while perusing Janice Anderson’s revised doctoral dissertation, Matthew’s Narrative Web: Over, and Over, and Over again , I was impressed by her attention to literary structures of repetition within and across Matthew’s Gospel. 1 Her research, in part, nudged me closer toward my present conviction that Matthew…
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
“Like a lily among the thorns, so is my love among the maidens… My beloved is mine and I am his; he pastures among the lilies.” Song 2:2, 16 In chapter two of the Song of Solomon, the Beloved compares his Love to a lily among thorns. The language of…
Introduction From the very beginning, angels and animals have played mediating roles between God and Man. Just as the World was made three-tiered (Heaven, Earth, Deep), so the creatures were made (Angels, Men, Animals). Before Christ came to build the permanent bridge across the chasm between God and Man, various…
Matthew 13, the third major discourse of the apostle’s gospel, is comprised almost entirely of parables. While it may seem that all the parables serve the same purpose in fulfilling the prophet Isaiah (Matthew 13:14), the parables found in verses 44–52, at the very least, function outside that purpose. This…
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Gabrielle Kuby argues in her wide-ranging book on The Global Sexual Revolution that the goal of the sexual revolution is to introduce a new anthropology that will serve as the basis of family law, social norms, and human self-identity: “Modern and post-modern man have emancipated themselves – from God, from…
“You are fairer than the sons of men,” says the court poet to the king in Psalm 45:2, using a word that is more typically used to describe feminine beauty. But the king's beauty is masculine. He is fair because of the grace that pours through his lips - the…
University of Erlangen theologian Paul Althaus reacted to the German election of 1933 with enthusiasm: “Our Protestant churches have greeted the turning point of 1933 as a gift and miracle of God” (all quotations from Robert Erickson, Complicity in the Holocaust ). Althaus wasn't alone. A Protestant newspaper warned against…
Matthew Bates ( Birth of the Trinity ) points to Hebrews 1:8-9's quotation of Psalm 45 as an example of “prosopological” interpretation of the Old Testament. The Logos or Spirit speaks in the persona ( prosopon ) of the poet of the Psalm, and the interaction described in the Psalm…
Morris Davis's The Methodist Unification is a study of the reunion of the Methodist church following the Civil War. Davis pays specific attention to the racial politics of the reunion, which formed a black-only national conference, segregated from the white churches. Davis interprets this move against the broad background of…
Paul says, Christ is our life. Not, Christ gives us life, or Christ defends our life, or Christ supports our life. No: Christ is our life. I died, Paul tells the Galatians, and I no longer live but Christ lives in me. We died with Christ, and Christ lives in…
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