Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Paradosis Center at John Brown University in Siloam Spring, Arkansas, put on its first conference last week, it was a remarkable event. It was an ecumenical conference including Orthodox (John Behr, Edith Humphrey, others), Catholic (Rusty Reno, Michael Root, others), and Evangelical (Timothy George, David Lyle Jeffrey). Unusually for…
Naphtali Meshel observes in his new The "Grammar" of Sacrifice that scholars have been talking for decades about the "grammatical" character of ritual and sacrifice in general, but have never actually analyzed a specific ritual or sacrificial system grammatically. Some even talk about a "universal grammar" of sacrifice "even though…
Some Christians are rather breezy about the problem of evil. We shouldn't be. Do I need to remind you of the grisly beheadings that have taken place over the past few weeks? Do I need to remind you of the blood of innocents that’s been spilled in our own country?…
Have you ever been to a wedding where the heavens opened and a voice declared the couple “husband and wife”? Few of us have. Beautiful as they are, most marriages are quite mundane. Yet when Jesus talks about marriage, He describes it as something that God does: “What God has…
Jesus is the last and greatest of the Prophets. He is the Prophet that Moses predicted (Deuteronomy 18). That means He gives the final word, brings the blueprints for the final temple, speaks the final world into existence, and has complete and permanent access to the divine court, where He…
Paul stands against those who are “troubling” or “disturbing” the Galatians churches ( tarasso ; 1:7; also in 5:10). The reference seems to be two great troublers from the Old Testament. First, Achan is described as a “troubler” for the problems he causes in the aftermath of the battle at…
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Summing up a survey of the Bible’s use of combat myths, Jon Levenson ( Creation and the Persistence of Evil , 24) says: “God’s visible victory over the enemies of order is in the past. The present is bereft of the signs of divine triumph. It is a formidable challenge…
“Modern medicine works very well,” says Rupert Sheldrake ( The Science Delusion , 260-1), especially “with mechanical aspects of the body, like defective joints, decayed teeth, faulty heart valves and blocked arteries, or infections curable with antibiotics.” But it has “tunnel vision” since it focuses all its attention to physical…
Jesus’ cry of dereliction (Calvin, Institutes , 2.16.11) expressed His feeling that he was “forsaken and estranged from God” and that all His cries were unheard. It was “as if God himself had plotted [His] ruin.” Calvin adds, though, that God was not in fact angry with Jesus: “we do…
Calvin ( Institutes 2.16.2-4) works to reconcile the Bible’s double testimony about God’s attitude toward sinners. On the one hand, God redeems His enemies; on the other hand, this redemption comes out of God. He resolves by saying that while we all “have in ourselves something deserving of God’s hatred,”…
In explaining the name “Jesus,” Calvin ( Institutes 2.16.1) makes this curious statement: “The office of Redeemer was laid upon him that he might be our Savior. Still, our redemption would be imperfect if he did not lead us ever onward to the final goal of salvation.” That distinction of…
Sex expresses love, but John Paul II argues that more needs to be said ( Love and Responsibility ). After all, “There may be affection between people who are not sexually attracted to each other.” That suggests that “it is not love of man and woman that determines the proper…
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