Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Below is an excerpt from Mark Horne’s manuscript from his forthcoming commentary on Ephesians, specifically on Paul’s reference to Christians as “saints” (Ephesians 1:1). “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus.” Paul greets…
There was nothing in the ark except the two tablets that Moses put there at Horeb, where the LORD made a covenant with the people of Israel, when they came out of Egypt (2 Chronicles 5:10). When Solomon finally brought the ark of the covenant to the finished temple in…
In As You Like It , Shakespeare famously describes the seven ages of a man’s life. The division of man’s life into stages is not an invention by Shakespeare, nor merely a common medieval artifice, but an expression of the real journey taken in life. Shakespeare seems to divide up…
Is there a chief characteristic which best illumines the image of God in Man? What is it exactly that makes Man as a lens through which to see God? Moses thoughtfully and deliberately escorts the reader to the characteristic showcased above all else: humility. Though much ink has been spilled…
Note: This essay is adapted from a talk delivered at the Howell E. Jackson Committee conference on “Foundations of Baptist Education,” held at Union University, Oct. 4-5, 2024. It’s no secret that evangelicals are converting to High Church traditions, a term I will use to refer to Anglo-Catholicism, Roman Catholicism,…
In recent years, there has been a flurry of conversions from Protestant Christianity towards Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, at least in part due to their supposed early church heritage relative to Protestantism. In the words of Rod Dreher, a former Methodist who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, “Many evangelicals seek…
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Laurence Moore's Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans is a study of American religion that is not considered “mainstream” or “mainline”—Mormons, Catholics, Jews, Christian Science, Fundamentalists, Black churches. The goal is not to fill in a gap. The goal is to challenge the assumption that the “mainline” should function…
After John introduces the new scene – “I saw another sign in the heaven, great and marvelous” – the sign is described with two clauses (Revelation 15:1). The first is, woodenly translated, “angels seven having plagues seven the last”; and the second it “in them finished the passion of God.”…
Both Old and New Testaments, writes David Martin ( Pentecostalism , 12) include principles that “by persistent extension and deepening . . . can divest systems of authority of their justification and turn law into a matter of inward judgement and sincerity rather than external observance.” “Rend your heart and…
Greek myths valorize blindness. Tiresias is a blind seer, and when Oedipus finally “sees,” he becomes Tiresias, digging out his eyes with Jocasta's brooches. The bard who sings of the Trojan War in the Odyssey is, like Homer himself, blind. For the Greeks, the sightless are the true seers. Scripture…
The saints playing harps and singing on the fiery firmament are there because they are victorious over three enemies: the beast, the image of the beast, and the number of the beast's name (Revelation 15:2). When we look back at how those three are presented earlier in Revelation, we realize…
Girard's theory of scapegoating as the great virtue of explaining how the death of Jesus can remake human society. By refusing to acknowledge sin, Jesus becomes the innocent scapegoat, and thereby exposes the scapegoat mechanism for what it is. That exposure is the good news, and undoes the perverse dynamics…
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