Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I grew up in the 1950s. This was before the "Sixties" and the democratization, informalization, and general cheapening of the church and her worship. Ministers were Father Donovan, Pastor Eckhart, Reverend MacPherson, Mister (Episcopal) Parker, and Brother Smith. Liturgical speech was high language, sounding kind of like the King James…
Metaphor exerts a surprisingly powerful influence within our thinking. Although it is easily dismissed as little more than a figure of speech, when we attend more closely to the ways in which we use it, metaphor’s importance swiftly becomes more apparent. Although many of our metaphors have become quite invisible…
What is a tree, scientifically speaking? A mere googling gives the following answer: “a woody perennial plant, typically having a single stem or trunk growing to a considerable height and bearing lateral branches at some distance from the ground.” We can increase detail by describing its family, genus, species and…
The majority of Western evangelical Christians rarely, if ever, fast as a form of spiritual discipline. In our culture, fasting is more connected with dieting than worship, the other side of our deeply ambiguous fascination with food. Food is everywhere. We eat more than ever before, at greater speed, and…
A Grammar of Creation An understanding of the visual-musical language of the Bible must begin with Genesis 1. This is fortunate, because when explaining biblical types to academics, as opposed to children, one is repeatedly forced to start from scratch. From birth, a healthy child is attuned to rhythm and…
In an inverse Eden, a land laid waste, one works alone tending the trash. There are none like him in all the earth, inquisitive, playful and most drawn to those mysterious, dancing bipedal creatures who lost earth and left it to go wandering the vast wilderness of space. Humans have…
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Jesus evaluates and assesses the angels of the churches of Asian Minor (Revelation 2-3). On what basis? What does He know about them? Mainly, He knows their works ( erga ), as He repeatedly says: “I know your works” (2:2); “I know your works” (2:19); “I know your works” (3:1);…
In his Paul and the Torah , Lloyd Gaston argues that the Pauline phrase erga tou nomou , “works of the law,” is a subjective genitive. That is, it refers to what the law works, and specifically to what Torah works, not to the obedience that one may or may…
The parable of the sower teaches that some receive the word, have life, and grow, only to wither and die. Yet in other places the NT seems to indicate that those who ultimately die were never alive to begin with. Tares were sown by the evil one from the outset.…
In his study of Papuans of the Trans-Fly , F.E. Williams remarked on the role of homosexual relations in the rites of initiation: “The bachelors had recourse to sodomy, a practice which was not reprobated but was actually a custom of the country - and a custom in the true…
Abortion rights have been defended as a matter of protecting a woman’s right to choose what she does with her body. Why not allow a woman to choose to use her body to sell sexual favors, or to perform sex acts before a camera? That is even more obviously a…
A woman clothed in the sun, standing on the moon, crowned with stars, is about to give birth (Revelation 12). The child is a male ( arsen , v. 5), the shepherd who will rule the nations (v. 5). He is a new Adam, a point neatly underscored by the…
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