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 typological pattern of Ruth is: Naomi, the Jewish widow, is bereft; the Gentile daughter Ruth joins her; Naomi gets a savior when Boaz attaches himself to Ruth . That is, the pattern is not “Savior, then incorporation of Gentiles” but “incorporation of Gentiles, then Savior.” In the fulfillment, it’s…
I’ve been listening all day to piano and orchestral music from several Chinese composers: Shande Ding, Yah-jun Hua, Wen-cheng Lu, Guang Ren, Bi-guang Tang, Lishan Wang, Jianer Zhu. They combine traditional Chinese music with Western forms, and are far more accessible than many contemporary Western composers. They are not naive…
Milbank finds Augustine’s theory of signs unsatisfactory, since signs are there only to “recall res ” and “finally to recall spiritual res in the soul, where Christ speaks, wordlessly.” At the same time, he finds a “counter-failing tendency” in Augustine’s notion of the interior word, since that “construes thought as…
Augustine is charged with being proto-Cartesian when he locates the imago Dei in the mind or soul. Maybe, but we need to ask what he says about that imago . Among other things, he sees the soul’s capacity to beget an inner word that is both different from and yet…
John 6:53: Jesus therefore said to them, Truly, Truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him…
Docetism can take subtle forms. We can affirm that Jesus was truly human, with human hands and human eyes and human feet and human hair. But we fall into docetism if we fail to see how specific Jesus’ humanity is. The Son became human, but we need to be more…
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