Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Inspired by the “Moscow Mood” Debate In a shocking 1961 study, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram would don an official-looking white lab coat and tell a volunteer to administer increasing shocks to another “volunteer” in an adjacent room strapped into an “electric chair” just out of sight. The shocks were incrementally…
My title and the substance of the article are borrowed from a section of David Wenham’s excellent book, Paul: Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity? I am appropriating ideas from the pages in his book which address the question, “Why Does Paul refer to Jesus’ Life and Ministry so…
Some of us may be familiar with the notion that the epistle of James is like a New Testament version of Proverbs or other wisdom literature. According to this line of thinking, the epistle of James (together with the other wisdom literature) is basically a collection of timeless sayings without…
This summer I started walking a long trail that ran north from our home. On my best days, I would walk a total of five miles at a brisk pace. This trail follows the power lines that serve a significant portion of North Dallas and stretches far past the two…
I am an Australian. I went to the American Academy of Religion mega-fest last year to meet up with some friends, to present a paper at a ‘science and religion’ panel, and to marvel at the sheer scale of how Americans do things. It was quite a ride. Looking at…
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 We evangelicals do not often understand the roles of men and women in ministry. Because our consumerist culture has gutted the notion of family as it was historically understood, all Biblical passages about women in church ministry (a familial organism) are almost incomprehensible to…
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Leviticus 1 tells us that Yahweh called Moses from the tent of meeting to deliver instructions about sacrifice. What is that "tent of meeting" ( 'ohel mo'ed )? Judging by the usage of Leviticus, it would seem to be the tabernacle or a portion of the tabernacle. Most of the…
The Ten Words include twelve negative commands. Most of the verbs that are negated are unique: 1) Thou shalt not have ( lo' yihyeh-leka ; literally, "there shalt not be to thee") other gods. 2) Thou shalt not prostrate ( lo'-tishtachweh ) to them (i.e., images). 3) Thou shalt not…
Thomas Aquinas summed up a long tradition when he said that philosophy is theology's ancilla , its maidservant. That's an apt description, and applies as well to natural science, social science, poetry, literary criticism, history, etc. etc. Philosophy has a special role only because her work often resembles theology's, and…
John Milbank currently has a series of essays on natural law running a Church Life Journal . It's a "revisionist" account of natural law. And one of the revisions is Milbank's post-Kantian conception of the relation of nature and culture, something he lays out in his essay, " Only Theology…
Steven Duby ( Divine Simplicity ) addresses the sort of argument I offered in yesterday's post . I quote a long paragraph (p. 148), with comments interspersed. "One might contend," Duby writes, "for a divine complexity that is necessary and irrevocable with no risk of divisibility. Such a hypothesis elicits…
This is a response to the notion of divine simplicity. It's not a refutation. It's an experiment designed to tease out the logic of the claim. Simplicity means that God is without parts. He has no physical parts, and He's not a composite of any metaphysical "parts" either. He's not…
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