Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Paul writes to Jews, “You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?” (Romans 2:22b) The English translation “rob temples” makes readers think of pagan temples. There was only one Temple for Israel, so robbing more than one would indicate other temples are in view. And if the Jews wanted to…
Two offerings Humanity’s first vocation involves guarding and serving the trees that emerge from the ground (Genesis 2:15). God provides these trees to humanity for food. A serpent appears and tempts the couple to eat from a special forbidden tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Humanity…
At the outset of the Torah (as Christians understand it), a triune God creates the heavens and earth over the course of a seven-day week. Why? What’s the connection between the three and the seven? Could a triune God have created the world over any period of time he chose?…
How relevant to the modern reader are the flying axe head of Deuteronomy 19:5 and the roof parapet of Deuteronomy 22:8? Indeed, how relevant were they to the daily lives of Israelites thirty-five hundred years ago? Suppose that accidental falls from rooftops were exceedingly uncommon in ancient Israel, or that…
1 For most of my life, the standing of the American church as a source of national social and political order was measured by reports from the front of the so-called “culture wars.” 2 Memory brings to mind battles over feminism and the ERA, so-called gay rights, the breakdown of…
But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel…’ And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the…
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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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