Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto Me. In 2005, God blessed our family with our third child, our second daughter, whom we named Bethany. As soon as Bethany was born, we knew there was something different about her. Unlike her two older siblings, who were born…
Christian, what is it that we believe? While Creeds like the Nicene and Apostle’s have been fundamental pieces of Christian liturgy and life, the American Church is highly unattached to these classic statements. From this creedal phobia has arisen the popular “No Creed, but Christ” slogan. Such slogan, of course,…
Revisiting William Cavanaugh’s devastating 2009 The Myth of Religious Violence . The myth of Cavanaugh’s title is a well-known one. According to the myth, religion is a distinct sphere of human life and practice from the rest of human social life, a universal impulse in human beings, and is dogmatic,…
19 Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. 20 And when he had so…
An octave is a repetition, a repetition with a difference. It’s not the first note played again , but the first note played at a higher pitch. Octaves have always marked new beginnings. Hebrew boys were circumcised on the eighth day. Firstborn sheep were dedicated to Yahweh on the eighth…
We say Jesus’ resurrection is good news. It wasn’t good news for the disciples on the first Easter. More like perplexing, bewildering news. For others, it wasn’t perplexing, and it certainly wasn’t good. It was plain old bad news. Early in Luke’s gospel, Herod is terrified that Jesus might be…
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In the first phase of the sixth trumpet, a voice instructs the trumpet angel to release the four angels at the Euphrates (Revelation 9:14). When they do, a 200 million horse cavalry appears. It’s a huge army; what sort of army is it? The horsemen and horses are terrifying, fire-breathing…
More than one scholar has asked whether the new “apocalyptic” Paul is a Marcionite Paul. Douglas Moo has accused Douglas Campbell’s Deliverance of God of presenting a Paul who teaches an “incipient Marcionism.” Contributors to Beyond Old and New Perspectives on Paul raise similar concerns about Campbell more gently. David…
With all the pomp of an intrepid investigative reporter who has uncovered the next Watergate, Jerry Coyne announces that Catholics believe that God created the world: “The Church’s support of evolution, then, has been equivocal: while allowing that humans had evolved, it also affirmed human exceptionalism in the form of…
Douglas Campbell ( Deliverance of God , 640-656) solves a number of issues at a stroke with his complex, layered explanation of Paul’s use of hilasterion in Romans 3:25. The word is used most commonly in the LXX to refer to the “mercy seat” above the ark, especially in connection…
Douglas Campbell suggests ( Deliverance of God , 739-40) that Genesis 17:5 creates a problem for Paul. There, God promises that Abraham will be the father of many nations, but ties that promise to circumcision. Campbell writes, the birth of Isaac, though whom this promise is realized, “creates a difficult…
Douglas Campbell ( Deliverance of God , 749) convincingly suggests that the promise to Abraham is specifically embodied in his son Isaac: “Abraham is convinced that God is capable of giving him an heir. And if God does so, then the further promises are enabled - more offspring, land, and…
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