Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In a recent article in Biblical Horizons , I argued that the imagery of James 1:21 alludes to baptism, and particularly to baptism as an ordination and incorporation into the holy priesthood. This understanding of baptism as ordination to priesthood is not, I have since discovered, original, but in fact…
He will be a priest on his throne, and the counsel of peace will be between the two of them (Zechariah 6:13b). A prime difficulty in the interpretation of this verse is the antecedent of the pronoun "them." A number of alternatives have been offered. Some suggest that the "two"…
Like certain kinds of music, the unchanging rhythm of Aquinas's Summa gets into your bones. Read a few sections and it begins to run through your head. You start drumming your fingers, humming, swaying gently to the rhythm of Videtur-Sed Contra-Responsio, Videtur-Sed Contra-Responsio, “It seems-On the contrary-I answer.” The only…
The Book of Revelation is a gold mine of liturgical information. The various hymns and exclamations in Revelation have always been used in Christian worship. As I have been studying Revelation this year, it occurred to me that make a complete hymn out of the various hymns in the book.…
In the book of Revelation we find a triad of Strong Angels, and another triad of Other Angels. The purpose of this essay is to explore the Biblical background of these two sets, and thus fill out their meaning. The first triad of angels we encounter in the Bible comes…
In Revelation, the term aggelos means messenger, of course, but with a special emphasis on messenger as covenant administrator. This is immediately obvious from the fact that the angels are constantly acting to enforce the covenant one way or another: sealing people, bringing judgment, calling for repentance, etc. They are…
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Richard Finn begins his Almsgiving in the Later Roman Empire with a summary of the Sentences of Sextus , a Hellenstic Pythatorean work adapted to Christian use by Rufinus. According to the text, gifts of money, food, or clothing to the poor was “an activity which met with God’s blessing…
C. John Collins has observed that it is common to set Torah and the Wisdom books in opposition to each other. The former is covenantal and specific to Israel; Wisdom is based on observation of creation and history. The contrast is exaggerated at best, and in a 2o09 article is…
Cicero wanted to defend the reality of human freedom against the Stoics. But the issue of divine foreknowledge stood in the way. How could human choices be truly free if God knew those choices ahead of time? As Augustine summarized Cicero’s concern ( City of God , 5.9), “if all…
S tephen John Wright’s Dogmatic Aesthetics offers a dogmatic treatment of beauty using the work of Robert Jenson. Though Jenson hasn’t written a theological aesthetics, Wright is correct that Jenson’s work is shot through with aesthetic concerns: “Jenson’s theology is irreducibly aesthetic.” One of Jenson’s fundamental claims is that the…
B ig law is dying says Benjamin Barton in his forthcoming Glass Half Full . In fact, it’s dying four times over. There’s death from above, death from below, death from the state, death from the side. From above, large law firms have been huge and hugely profitable since the…
In his massive study of Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements , Louis Newman claims that the “Mosaic Books have never held a dominant place in orthodox Christianity; it is only among special groups that the Pentateuch has won adherence,” groups where “literal acceptance of the Code” was “a fundamental…
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