Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Introduction Isaiah 21 can only be understood in the light of its placement in the architecture of the second “volume” of the prophecy (chapters 13–27). The contents are arranged in twin sevenfold “columns” that represent the great bronze pillars of Solomon’s Temple: Jachin and Boaz, priest and king. The priestly…
A Biblical Reflection on the Purpose of the Constellations The starry heavens hold a place of wonder in the hearts of men. Since man’s creation we have looked up into the heavens and have beheld its glory. This is particularly true of the night sky. The stars, in their shinning…
The case for there being five discourses within the Gospel according to Matthew is a hard one to challenge: surely the closing formula “when Jesus finished these sayings” as found in 8:1, 11:1, 13:53, 19:1, and 26:1 settles it once and for all. And by the five instances of the…
The Long Commission The Great Commission of Matthew 28 has long been a cornerstone of American Evangelicalism. It has formed and fashioned the American church’s missional impulse. Yet when viewed from the wide lens of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, the Great Commission is revealed as one of the pillars…
I am delighted to see that more and more churches in the Reformed tradition are now recognizing that all baptized children are members of the body of Christ and therefore ought to be communing with the rest of the body at the Lord’s Table. This has been decades in the…
Good leaders have always been rare. In today’s world, they seem extinct. Joe Rigney’s recent book Leadership and Emotional Sabotage digs into the spiritual reasons for the leadership epidemic and recommends cures. Rigney starts with a summary of a book by Edwin Friedman called A Failure of Nerve . Friedman’s…
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Some years ago, Richard Bauckham wrote superb book on Revelation, The Climax of Prophecy . It contained nine references to John’s gospel. A recent collection of papers in honor of the dean of Johannine studies, Raymond Brown, contained only a handful of references to Revelation, all in a single footnote.…
Drawing on the work of Matthias Klinghardt, Claudio Carvalhaes ( Eucharist and Globalization , 37-8) claims that in the Greco-Roman world the term koinonia had the primary meaning of “meal community.” He adds, “Within the meal communities the values of society were upheld, developed and expanded (e.g., mutuality, joy, modest,…
If you read about a character who visited friends one day and stormed in like a thundercloud the next, who visited unexpectedly and shared a meal but then withdrew into a closed palace, who blew smoke from his nostrils and then spoke with magnificent gentleness and compassion, you’d be inclined…
In his 1844 sermon on Catholic unity , John Williamson Nevin steered carefully around the paradox of a unified church divided by denominations. On the one hand, he insisted that the church’s unity must take outward, visible, social form. As a soul without a body is disfigured, so inward unity…
Nevin ( Catholic Unity ) knows the arguments for denominationalism: “We frequently hear apologies made for the existence of sects in the Church. They are said to be necessary. The freedom and purity of the Church, we are told, can be maintained only in this way. They provoke each other…
Trusting in the Bible’s depictions of the unified church, and hopeful in Christ’s own prayer for the unity of His disciples, Nevin insisted ( Catholic Unity ) that the fragmentation of the church could not possibly be permanent: “Can any one suppose, that the order of things which now prevails…
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