Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Mystical theologians are often unguarded, extreme, un-nuanced, pressing to the edges of heresy, sometimes beyond. Still, the mystics are worthy of study. Why? Many reasons. Unlike some late medieval and post-Reformation dogmaticians, mystical theologians are often instinctively and richly Trinitarian. Historical-critical approaches to Scripture left mystical theologians virtually untouched; mystics…
Portia of Belmont is a “lady richly left,” as Bassanio says of her in the first Act of The Merchant of Venice . Plus, she’s beautiful and wise. Suitors clamber to Belmont in hope. Her father knew it would be so, and in his will set up a fairy-tale test…
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In the nature of the case, “the” Christian meditation on Deuteronomy 14:1-21 cannot be written. Meditation offers too many possibilities, opens too many doors. There is not one and only one correct set of associations for a Christian to consider when thinking of Deuteronomy 14:1-21. We could, for example, consider…
Having retold the story of the cumulative sin of Israel leading to the great atonement on the cross, Paul then reemphasizes that, just as both Jew and Gentiles were locked into sin and judgment, now they are both justified by faith: Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded.…
Deuteronomy 14 is full of allusions to events of Israel’s history and other portions of Scripture. What would an Israelite learn by mediation on these allusions? The answer, I believe, is at least fourfold. Faith, Worship, War For the ancient Israelite first hearing Moses’ sermon, or perhaps hearing it read…
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INTRODUCTION One of the earliest Christological controversies in the church was provoked by Nestorius, who denied that Mary was the “God-bearer” (Greek, theotokos). The controversy was not about Mary, but about the nature of Christ: Was the eternal Son of God born as a baby? Unbelievable as it was, the…
Luther was famously hostile to the book of Esther. Luther was also famously enamoured of the idea of the Deus absconditus, the hidden God. These positions are inconsistent: No book of the Bible better narrates the power and providence of the hidden God than Esther, which refrains even from naming…
Protestants, rightly, protest at a number of Roman Catholic claims about Mary. At times, Protestants distort and exaggerate Roman Catholic teachings. That is unfortunate, since the official Catholic teaching is objectionable enough by itself. And the errors of Marian doctrine reveal some of the underlying problems of Roman Catholic theology…
Luke 1:53: He has filled the hungry with good things. Luke’s gospel is a gospel of reversals. God chooses a humble young woman on the margins of Israel to be the mother of the Savior. While Augustus Caesar is reigning in Rome, Jesus is born on the outskirts of empire,…
Mothering an infant is a thankless task. First, you have to carry a large, heavy pouch wherever you go for a number of months. Then comes the agony of labor. The momentary joy of birth is immediately followed by the prolonged inconvenience of nursing, changing diapers, comforting an infant at…
In his fascinating book on aging and the brain ( The Wisdom Paradox , 2005), Elkhonon Goldberg focuses attention on the phenomenon of “pattern recognition,” the “ability to recognize a new object or a new problem as a member of an already familiar class of objects of problems.” With experience,…
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