Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Job appears in the Bible as a true story and it is regarded as such in other Scripture: As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the…
Thanksgiving is warfare. Gratitude is a weapon. Wield it well. Give thanks for the preparation. The hustle and bustle, the messy kitchen, the endless cleaning, the extra chairs, and stained tablecloths sing the song of hospitality. God desires that we prepare a place for friends and strangers, feasting and laughing,…
We often hear that, along with Leviticus, Ecclesiastes is the “most peculiar book,” lurking in the Bible’s back alley. 1 But it is high time that we retire this old dirge. God has concealed much gold here, therefore much glory is ours if we are careful to read Solomon’s wisdom…
1 Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you observe the calving of the does? 2 Can you number the months that they fulfill, and do you know the time when they give birth? Job 39 We have and we do, Lord God. Spring is calving season.…
For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a holy day, a Sabbath of complete rest to Yahweh. - Exodus 35:2 The instructions for building the tabernacle end with a Sabbath command and the narrative about building begins with a Sabbath command, before…
High in the list of now forgotten sins is simony. It was not always so: the medieval schoolmen believed simony to be the worst of ecclesiastical crimes and waged a centuries long campaign to purge the Church of this financial and spiritual corruption. As the schoolmen robustly defined it, “simony…
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Bede ( Bede: On the Tabernacle (Liverpool University Press - Translated Texts for Historians) ) neatly contrasts Sinai and the mount of Jesus’ sermon. Moses goes up alone on Sinai “since at that time the Scripture of the law was being committed solely to the people of Israel.” Jesus speaks…
Jesus’ claim that He will be “lifted up” fulfills Old Testament prophecies concerning the temple, according to Paul Hoskins ( Jesus as the Fulfillment of the Temple in the Gospel of John (Paternoster Biblical Monographs) , 156-7). When “God glorifies Jesus through the events of Jesus’ hour,” it fulfills promises…
Chalcedonian Christology, Pannenberg argues ( Jesus - God and Man (scm classics) , 344-5), presupposes an anthropology: “Openness to God is the radical meaning of that human ‘openness in relation to the world’ that constitutes man’s specific nature in distinction from all animals.” He goes on: “only under this presupposition…
Protestants make the best ecumenists. We aren’t absolutely invested in our traditional formulas, and we are always going back to the great consensus document of the Christian church, viz., the Bible. Conversely and for the same reason, ecumenists in more tradition-bound traditions become more Protestant. It’s no accident that the…
The Jews who clash with Jesus (John 8) claim to be Abraham’s seed ( sperma ) and Jesus agrees (v. 37). When the say that Abraham is their father, Jesus demurs: “if you are Abraham’s children ( tekna ) . . . . (v. 39). There’s a difference between being…
In his massive new The Gospel of John: A Commentary (115-6), Frederick Dale Bruner has this to say about Jesus’ promise to Nethaniel in John 1:51. He notes, first, that this is the first time Jesus speaks about Jesus; it is “Jesus’ first self-identification in a Gospel that is full…
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