Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance. Hebrews 10:34 There is an old Puritan dictum that goes, “Sit lightly on the world.” George MacDonald places it…
As Genesis unfolds, God chooses a line of promise out of the nations. One by one its offshoots are peeled away as the story zooms in on God’s chosen people, Israel. First, the line of Cain is peeled away as Cain is sent out from the presence of YHWH. Though…
The following article was an address given to Anselm Presbytery (CREC) in the Fall 2024. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Pray with me. Father of Heavenly Lights and fount of all Wisdom, guide us we pray, by your Word and Spirit,…
At my age, I’ve given up on the fantasy of “keeping up.” Much of my reading is now narrowly focused, research-reading in service of writing projects. If you want bibliography on the ontology of artifacts in Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas (which you don’t), or the purity laws of Leviticus, or…
I have been reading, thinking, and writing about the Internet and its effects upon our identities, communities, polities, and discourses for nearly a copy of decades. In that time, I have encountered no book as perceptive on the subject as Antón Barba-Kay’s A Web of Our Own Making: The Nature…
Identifying the men Paul refers to as “enemies of the cross” in Philippians 3:18 turns out to be relatively difficult. Peter O’Brian speaks of “all kinds of suggestions regarding their identity,” and offers a list of interpretations: “moral libertinists, behavioural materialists, orthodox Jews, lapsed or apostate Christians—because of persecution, Jewish…
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Colossians 1:22-23: He has reconciled you in His fleshly body . . . if you continue in faith firmly established and steadfast. Calvin once said the way you begin the Christian life isn’t very important. The big issue is not how you got started. The big issue is whether you…
“It is finished,” Jesus announced. That doesn’t mean His death ends suffering. His pain gives meaning to ours. He suffered so we can suffer with Him and in Him. Jesus didn’t suffer so we can endure afflictions. He suffered so we can rejoice in afflictions, because for those of us…
Geertz ( The Interpretation Of Cultures (Basic Books Classics) ) has some insightful things to say about interpretation. “A good interpretation of anything,” he says, “takes us to the heart of that of which it is the interpretation. When it does not do that, but leads us instead somewhere else…
In his famous essay on “thick description” ( The Interpretation Of Cultures (Basic Books Classics) ), Clifford Geertz argues that anthropology is not about becoming native but learning “to converse with them, a matter a great deal more difficult, and not only with strangers, than is commonly recognized” (13). Its…
In the past, writes Rosemary Reuther in Faith and Fratricide (48-49), it’s been common to distinguish sharply between messianic Judaism and the “acute Hellenism” of Jewish apocalypticism and gnosticism. Reuther doesn’t think that works: “apocalyptic and Gnostic modes of thinking” become evident between the first and third centuries AD not…
The description of the work of the two witnesses (Revelation 11:5-6) is carefully arranged. The verses are framed by the verb thelo , “desire.” Their enemies desire harm (v. 5); they respond with plagues and judgments whenever they desire (v. 6). Verse 5 describes the fiery justice against those who…
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