Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Mrs. Marguerite Lane of Grand Rapids writes to ask if I have ever noticed a correlation between the eight beatitudes of Matthew 5 and the eight woes of Matthew 23. I confess that I have not. A glance at various commentators reveals that such a correspondence does not seem to…
1. The words of Agur, the son of Jakeh, the burden. The man declares to Ithiel, to Ithiel and Ucal: 2. Surely I am more stupid than any other man, And I do not have the understanding of a man. 3. And I have not learned wisdom, But I have…
Psalm 137 is widely regarded as one of the meanest of the imprecatory psalms. Certainly as we read it it is seems to be a song of pure vengeance. The exiles in Babylon, in grief over the judgment that Babylon has brought upon them, pray for the destruction of that…
In the Levitical law, the priests received two particular portions of each peace offering: the "wave offering" of the breast and the "heave offering" (or better, "contribution") of the right thigh. The purpose of this essay is to attempt to determine the reason why the second of these, the thigh,…
The story of Jesus’ visit, early in His ministry, to the synagogue in His home town of Nazareth is recorded for us in Luke 4:16-30. You may remember that Jesus read from Isaiah about how the Messiah would preach the gospel, care for the poor, work miracles, and bring in…
(The essay that follows concerns a rather touchy subject: how the Lord’s Supper is to be done. I am not writing to insult or offend, but to challenge. To that end I have not "held back" but have "gone ahead" and said what I think needs to be said —…
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America often claims to be the cornerstone of global order. Much of its foreign policy, argues George Friedman ( The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century , 46), is about creating disorder in order to prevent another power from imposing order and gaining power. If you think…
Reader Cas Saternos offers these thoughts in response to a post several weeks ago on knowing. The rest of this post is from him: Your comments on the three stage or “moments” of knowing fit well with the use of the term “know” in the musical realm. Consider the phrase…
Jenson summarizes Jonathan Edwards’ critique of substance in Systematic Theology: Volume 2: The Works of God (Systematic Theology (Oxford Hardcover)) (39-41). Edwards targets the mechanization of the world in Newton and Locke, arguing that “Christianity could not long coexist with a mechanistic worldview.” That was no problem, since for Edwards…
Jenson ( The knowledge of things hoped for : the sense of theological discourse , 174) summarizes his critique of Bultmann thusly: “For Bultmann, when Jesus’ history is to be told as about God, as eschatological occurrence, it is reduced to the ‘that.’ In the proclamation we meet the Christ…
Deeana Copeland Klepper, The Insight of Unbelievers: Nicholas of Lyra and Christian Reading of Jewish Text in the Later Middle Ages (Jewish Culture and Contexts) . Philadelphia:University ofPennsylvania Press, 2007. Modern biblical criticism is the product of Jewish-Christian cooperation. On the one hand, it is a creation of Anti-Calvinist Pietists…
William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Hardback, 285 pp, $49.95. In the beginning was religion, and only religion. Now religion was irrational, absolutist, and divisive, and so chaos was on the face of the…
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