Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Theophanic revelation is historically progressive, or eschatological, in character. First of all, in Genesis 1:2, the Spirit appeared inside the creation, sent by the Father. After the creation of man, the Spirit worked and works with humanity to bring us to maturity, from Daughter to Bride to fruitful Mother. He…
On the eighth day of the rite of "filling the hand," Aaron began his service at the altar. His first offering was a "calf" (Heb. `egel ), which served as a purification offering for himself and (apparently) his household (Leviticus 9:2, 8). This is striking for a couple of reasons.…
One of the distinctive items of the high priest’s clothing was the "golden plate" inscribed with the words "Holy to Yahweh" (Exodus 28:36-38). The word translated as "plate" is tsits , which literally means "flower." The verbal and noun forms are both used in Numbers 17:8, which describes Aaron’s rod…
The square, rectangle, and cross shapes appear all over the sanctuaries God reveals in the Bible: Tabernacle, Solomon’s Temple, Ezekiel’s Temple, New Jerusalem. One thing that can be said right away about these designs, and the occasional perfect circle (the lavers), is that they do not occur in nature. They…
"For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea-monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:40). Some reflections on Jonah’s Big Fish have led to the following essay. Let me…
Citing Melchizedek in Genesis 14:18-20, James Jordan has written that "the name of God in use among the nations was God Most High’" (Hebrew, `el `elyon ; in Through New Eyes , p. 176). In addition to Melchizedek, one could cite the example of Balaam, who invokes the Lord both…
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Jesus lays down His life for His friends. He is a martyr, a witness to death. His death is glorious. In his The Atonement: The Origins of the Doctrine in the New Testament , Martin Hengel wonders where that notion comes from. It doesn’t seem to come from the Old…
Roland Bainton divided Christian perspectives on war into three categories - pacifist, just war, and crusade. James Turner Johnson ( Just war tradition and the restraint of war: A moral and historical inquiry ) does not think Bainton’s categories are helpful. For starters, the crusaders considered their wars to be…
It’s often lamented that science has been politicized. John Brooke ( Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives ) points out that politics does not represent a fall from some pure original science but the point of modern science from the outset: “Science was respected not simply for its results but…
Richard Dawkins has famously proposed that cultural habits are passed on through “memes”: “tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches . . . . Memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad…
Rupert Sheldrake thinks science and religion overlap, but he is not an advocate of Intelligent Design. ID assumes a a mechanistic metaphor of the world: “Humans design machines, buildings and works of art. In a similar way the God of mechanistic theology, or the Intelligent Designer, is supposed to have…
Rich Bledsoe examines the pointlessness of today’s democratic capitalism and argues for the political and cultural necessity of acknowledging Jesus as Emperor at the Trinity House site.
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