Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Brian: This is, I guess, the ultimate news flash. Maybe the last one. Just a couple of minutes ago a lot of people ascended up into the air and met the returning Jesus Christ. At least that seems to be what happened. As you can see, our cameras are on…
Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who knows where mythology leaves off and history begins–or which id which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that…
One of the mysteries in Esther is why Mordecai refused to acknowledge Haman. We are never explicitly told, and such guesses as that he was continuing Yahweh’s war against Amalek do not carry weight. If such was Mordecai’s purpose he was in sin, because it was Yahweh’s war, not his.…
Below are two views of marriage that came out of an e-mail exchange. The first is a kind of of phenomenology of marriage, and of behavior within marriage. It is who we are by nature. It is bad news, very bad news. The second entry is what can be done…
The previous essay on “Monocovenantalism” brought up this matter, so a few comments here. In this area also the mindless militants have perverted the conversation. The notion that the death of Jesus was insufficient for our justification and that we must also have an imputation of His perfect life in…
Repeatedly over the last several years a variety of characters have accused the so-called “Federal Vision” of being “monocovenantal.” Many other wild and unsubstantiated accusations against the “Federal Vision” have been made, of course. Recently I learned that two of the men on the Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s study committee on…
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INTRODUCTION After the Olivet Discourse, Jesus “finished all these words” (26:1; cf. 7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 19:1).  His public ministry of teaching Israel is over.  Like Moses (Deuteronomy 32:45), nothing remains for Him but to die. THE TEXT “Now it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings,  that…
Protestants agreed with Catholics that the Song elaborates a nuptial analogy to the church’s relation to Christ, but Scheper finds a significant difference between Protestants and Catholics when they explain why that analogy is apt in the first place.  Protestants, consistent with the emphasis on legal categories for justification and…
The Puritans were not prudes, but the caricature has some basis in fact. Again the Song of Songs provides a neat barometer.  Scheper juxtaposes a medieval monk’s interpretation of the “breasts” of the Song with that of two Protestant interpreters.  The results are fascinating: “the Cistercian monk Gilbert of Hoilandia does…
the Protestant commentaries almost uniformly adopt a primarily ecclesial allegory, with the tropological dimension as a valid application. But so, in fact, is the medieval tradition built on the foundation of the ecclesial interpretation, and even those commentaries devoted most strikingly to the Christsoul allegory, such as Bernard’s, recognize that…
The modern oblivion of the book has tended to blind us to the really crucial position it holds in exegetic history, not only for the question of allegory but for the central matter of the relation of divine to profane love, and in fact, as Ruth Wallerstein has said, the…
there is a certain discrepancy between the purity of these theoretical statements, polemical in context, and the actual exegetic practice of the Reformers. Moreover, the rejection of allegory and the insistence on one undivided sense hinged for the early Reformers on maintaining a radical distinction between typology and allegory. But…
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