Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Mark Horne has done a good job elucidating how martyrdom paves the way for revival and success of Christ’s kingdom in the world, just as it also can bring more hardship and suffering. The diverging wheat and tares both growing up together, both benefitting from the watering of blood on…
For Part 1, click HERE . Anyone who has read James B. Jordan’s Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World and appreciated it as a revelation of how God communicates in symbols and types—both in His Word and in the created order—understands what it is like to…
Abel was the first martyr in history. There is no evading this. Jesus pairs him with a murdered prophet (Matthew 23:35; 2 Chronicles 24:20-22). Abel’s blood was heard by God (Genesis 4:10), and God responded to the cry by driving out Cain, Abel’s killer, from the eastern borderland near Eden…
Adapted from The Shape of Isaiah: A Covenant-Literary Analysis The prophetic texts are the most difficult parts of the Bible to understand. And when it comes to baffling the reader, they are no respecter of persons, perplexing with their Delphic wiles even the studied scholars. It has been said that…
The subtitle for the 2004 film Dodgeball is “A True Underdog Story.” If the viewer lets the words pass by without a double-take, he or she will likely spend the rest of the movie, which applies the “unlikely teammates make the best teams” trope to the “sport” of dodgeball, asking,…
The book of Ezra gives an almost odd amount of attention to vessels. These holy vessels, whether cups, bowls, or flagons, are either dedicated as tribute or were used in temple service. The two Hebrew words translated as ‘vessel’ in most English translations are used a total of 14 times.…
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The narrative of Saul is a superb study in the psychology of envy. Saul becomes enraged at David because of David’s success in fighting his, Saul’s battles. It is utterly irrational envy, as envy always is. Saul’s envy builds to a murderous rage, as he tries twice to kill David.…
A week ago, I posted a series of quotations from James Neill’s Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies . Neill shows that same-sex relations are common among animals and standard practice in many human societies. In what sense, then can we describe same-sex relations, as Paul does…
In his contribution to The Catholicity of the Reformation , Robert Jenson pencils in the contours of the communio ecclesiology that arose within Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism and has become, as he says, “a major achievement of ecumenical consensus” (1). It is a Trinitarian ecclesiology and, in Jenson’s summary, an…
I go back again and again to David Yeago’s seminal article on the “Catholic Luther” in The Catholicity of the Reformation . This time around, this passage on Luther’s early theology of the cross stood out. Yeago argues that Luther’s main question was not, “Where can I find a gracious…
Time was when the wealthy were considered the leisure classes. Nowadays, that’s not so, as the Economist reports: ‘Overall working hours have fallen over the past century. But the rich have begun to work longer hours than the poor. In 1965 men with a college degree, who tend to be…
Some of the most interesting current work being done on early modern English poetry traces connections between the poetry and the religious, especially the liturgical, conflicts of the Reformation and post-Reformation eras. Conflicts over sacraments put the medieval semiotic imagination in question, and fresh conceptions of image and sign shaped…
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