Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The preceding essay has caused me to consider the possibility that the life of Abraham as recounted in Genesis contains a typological prophecy of the history of Israel; that is, that the events in Abraham’s life broadly anticipate events in Israel’s history. This kind of pattern is seen in the…
by: Jeff Meyers and James Jordan In the fifth chapter of John’s gospel we read of a man who had been ill for 38 years and who was lying by a pool located by the Sheep Gate of Jerusalem. This sheep waited, as did many other infirm people, for an…
What had been reduced to ruin by this sex, would by the selfsame sex be recovered to salvation. As Eve believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel. The delinquency which the one occasioned by believing, the other by believing effaced. —Tertullian What is Paul saying about women and salvation…
Back in Biblical Horizons 132 I discussed the horrible abuse of the converted men of Salem/Shechem in Genesis 34. These Hivites had joined the covenant by circumcision and then were slaughtered by Simeon and Levi. That, however, is not the end of their story. In Joshua 9 we find the…
Genesis 14:14 says that Abram mustered his trained men, “born in his house,” to rescue Lot, and gives their number as 318. It is clear that the precise number is provided for some reason, but what is it? S. Gevirtz notes that 318 is the sum of all the prime…
Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. (John 21:11) This is one of those texts in the Bible that many people puzzle over. It is not a puzzle…
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Cavadini suggests that Augustine’s theory of the inner word is a theory of cultural production, formation, and transformation. First, Augustine’s theory opens space for the person’s transcendence of culture, a space that allows for critique and transformation. But this transcendence of culture does not mean removal from culture. The inner…
Colin Gunton has cited Augustine’s doctrine of the “inner word” as a sign of his preference for abstract over the material/concrete. John Cavadini (Theological Studies 1997) responds: “Augustine’s distinctions, between the presignified and the signified, are evidence unobserved and unaccounted for by Gunton, who sees a distinction only between the…
In his 1969 book on self-deception, Herbert Fingarette pointed out that self-deception could only work if the self was divisible, and suggested that the self is not a unit but a community of “subselves.” Fingarette traced this theme to Plato, and saw it intensified by the New Testament polarity of…
John D. Cox points out in his recent Baylor Press book on Shakespeare that ancient skepticism was not a-religious in the Renaissance and Reformation, but often served the purposes of reform. Erasmus, for instance, deployed skeptical arguments in challenging traditional, but corrupt, practices in the Catholic church. Like More, he…
Why 15-Love? “Love” is a corruption of the French “l’oeuf,” “the egg,” as in “the big goose egg.”
Tacitus records in Germania , 7, concerning the Germans in warfare: “They therefore carry with them when going to fight, certain images and figures taken out of their holy groves. What proves the principal incentive to their valour is, that it is not at random nor by the fortuitous conflux…
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