Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
Many years ago, while perusing Janice Anderson’s revised doctoral dissertation, Matthew’s Narrative Web: Over, and Over, and Over again , I was impressed by her attention to literary structures of repetition within and across Matthew’s Gospel. 1 Her research, in part, nudged me closer toward my present conviction that Matthew…
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
“Like a lily among the thorns, so is my love among the maidens… My beloved is mine and I am his; he pastures among the lilies.” Song 2:2, 16 In chapter two of the Song of Solomon, the Beloved compares his Love to a lily among thorns. The language of…
Introduction From the very beginning, angels and animals have played mediating roles between God and Man. Just as the World was made three-tiered (Heaven, Earth, Deep), so the creatures were made (Angels, Men, Animals). Before Christ came to build the permanent bridge across the chasm between God and Man, various…
Matthew 13, the third major discourse of the apostle’s gospel, is comprised almost entirely of parables. While it may seem that all the parables serve the same purpose in fulfilling the prophet Isaiah (Matthew 13:14), the parables found in verses 44–52, at the very least, function outside that purpose. This…
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I have some reflections on the political character of liturgical music at http://www.firstthings.com/ this morning.
In his lecture at the Biblical Horizons Summer conference this morning, Jim Jordan pointed out that the rivers that flow out of Eden are connected with commerce and economy. The rivers flow from the garden, where there are good things to eat, to the outer lands where there are minerals…
The third trumpet blows, and a star named Wormwood poisons the rivers and springs (Revelation 8). Since the trumpet sequence is following the sequence of creation days, we would expect a judgment on the land or the grain and trees at the third trumpet. Instead, we get a judgment on…
A few epistemological reflections on John Paul II’s meditations on Genesis in Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology Of The Body . John Paul makes much of the fact of Adam’s original solitude. In that state, before he found a helper corresponding to him, he came to know…
Lewis Hyde ( The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World ) traces the history of modern economics by recounting a history of usury in the Western world. In the Torah, Hyde argues, a boundary is drawn between the brothers within Israel and strangers; within Israel, there is…
The New Testament writers use two closely related Greek words for “salvation”: soteria and soterios . The former is common, used 45 times throughout the New Testament, mostly in the epistles. Soterios is used only a handful of times (Luke 2:30; 3:6; Acts 28:28; Ephesians 6:17; Titus 2:11). My question:…
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