Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Christians get sex wrong when we start from the wrong end. We start from human desires, passions, biological drives and “needs.” These are treated as givens, as the base-line natural reality of human sexuality. Then we come to the Bible and find, to our surprise, that God places all kinds…
Why isn't Proverbs better known as the Bible's book on "manliness"? I use quotation marks because the term almost seems archaic in our present culture, along with "manhood." Perhaps the Church is too embarrassed to admit the Bible addresses that much attention to the topic. But another reason can be…
In certain evangelical Christian churches it is the tradition to exalt preaching above the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Ever since the rise of Revivalist preachers pushing for conversions, the practice has cast doubt upon the possibility of Baptism or the Lord’s Supper being a “means of grace”…
Perhaps one of the most stimulating sections of Yoram Hazony’s The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture addresses the question of how we are to discern the meaning of biblical narratives, especially how biblical narratives might present arguments of a more general nature. Hazony quotes John Barton’s remarks about the difficulty of…
In this slender volume, Joseph Minich (Ph.D. student at the University of Dallas) attempts to answer some of the deepest questions of human existence. With his honesty, his probing questioning, his wide reading, and his ability to plunge beneath superficial answers, he provides a helpful source of reflection for fellow…
A Closer Look at Noah’s Post-Flood Humiliation In Genesis 9:20-27 My wife is currently leading a Bible study through Genesis for a group of insatiable Bible students. Because she is a deep thinker and has a high view of inspiration, there is no passage she is unwilling to face head…
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One of the remarkable insights of Mira Balberg’s remarkable book on Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature is the contrast she draws between biblical and rabbinic notions of impurity. For biblical writers, she says, “the only participants in the impurity system, apart from the primary sources of impurity,…
John is told to prophesy. Then he is given a “reed like a rod” and told to measure. Which is it - prophesy or measure? And if the former, why these tools? For starters, we can link this to the scene of measuring that is found in Ezekiel. John has…
Paul’s offers this description of his experience at the end of Galatians 2: He died to the law. Immediately he adds that he himself was crucified with Christ, so it seems that he died to the law when he was crucified with Christ (whenever that was). Yet though he died…
According to Paul, the baptized are clothed with Christ (Galatians 3:27). In baptism, all the baptized are joined in “one” in Christ Jesus. We can read backwards in Galatians 3 to see what that means. The “one” is the “one seed” of Abraham (3:16). We might follow NT Wright in…
Like her other books, Diane Ackerman’s The Human Age is like a long, informative conversation with a witty woman who has been everywhere, done everything, and talked to everyone who has something interesting to say. Given the environmental concerns that inspired this book, The Human Age is somewhat more polemical…
We think of other people as being, well, other , outside. Others might have some effects on the outer shell of the self, but not the hard core of me . At the very least, my physical self is my own. Aristotle might have predicted that this isn’t true. And…
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