Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the 48th year, the third month, and the fourteenth night, while I slept in my bed, I was taken in vision to Xanadu and set upon a high hill. Looking to the west, I saw a large building, surrounded with gardens and fountains, walks and gravestones, and a bell…
‘Tis the season to be informed–sometimes in gentleness, often with vigor–by a variety of Christians (and others) 1 claiming that it is wrong to celebrate Christmas. I have no desire to force anyone to celebrate Christmas against their will. Indeed, it would be insulting to the high holiday to pretend…
Part 2: The Enoch Factor Back in Open Book 21 we discussed "The Enoch Factor." Because that was several years ago (May 1994) and many people have begun reading this letter since that time, we shall return to the subject here and expand what we wrote at that time. After…
Day 6. The sixth day provides the creation of land animals and of humanity. As we saw above, the second day spills over to the first half of the third day, for only at that point did God say that it was good. Similarly, it seems that the fifth day…
During the past two decades, the "quest of the historical Jesus" has entered a new phase. The first incarnation of the quest was rudely shaken by the publication of Albert Schweitzer’s classic Quest of the Historical Jesus , easily the most devastating and funniest work of New Testament scholarship ever…
At the 1997 Biblical Horizons Summer Conference, the Rev. Jeffrey Meyers presented a series of remarkable lectures on the gospel of Mark. Among his many insightful comments, he suggested that the second gospel continues where the first gospel ends; Matthew ends with Jesus saying "Go" (Matthew 28:19), and Mark’s shows…
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What is tragedy? Some might think that it’s an easy question to answer. Crack open the nearest copy of Aristotle’s Poetics , and there you have it. It’s not so easy. What Chaucer meant by tragedy is not what Aristotle met, and in the modern age Hegel proposed a different…
Jesus bursts onto the scene in Mark as a strong man, conquering enemy after enemy. After His baptism, the Spirit drives Him into the wilderness, where He overcomes the devil and survives wild beasts. He enters the synagogue at Capernaum to teach on a Sabbath, and is met by a…
The following excerpt is taken from the first volume of my Matthew commentary , recently published by Athanasius Press . Jesus summoned the Twelve to Him and gave them authority and power (Matthew 10). He sent them out to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He told them…
John Hedley Brooke ( Science and Religion , 44-45) summarizes the argument of JW Draper's 1875 History of the Conflict between Religion and Science : "The history of science, he wrote, is a narrative of the conflict of two contending powers, the expansive force of the human intellect on one…
In an essay in Sin, Death, and the Devil , Stanley Hauerwas describes our “sinsick” condition, drawing from Thomas for help. Thomas links sin and sickness in a way that, Hauerwas says, strikes moderns as “bizarre”: “‘Sickness’ for us . . . is pointless. Being ‘sick’ is a condition that…
Everyone knows that Genesis 1 claims that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. William Brown ( Seven Pillars of Creation ) shows that the sevens are everywhere in the creation account: "The account of Genesis 1 is carefully structured around seven days within which…
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