Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I thought it might be good to put this up here, since it is 14 years old, and itself reflects earlier discussion. From this you can see that we at BH have been considering this notion for quite some time. Clearly, the last word has not been said. — James…
Hopefully, my commentary on James will be out later this year. But here are a few chiasms for your consideration. I think the James 5 chiasm orginally came from Doug Jordan. The entire book of James is focused on how the pastors and leaders (“brothers”) of the church use their…
In my first post I noted that the parables of Jesus were not simply illustrative stories. They are really nothing like the kind of simple, homely illustrations that preachers often use to explain difficult concepts to their congregations. Just to be clear: there’s nothing wrong with illustrating one’s sermonic statements.…
Ephesians is often treated as a pure type example of the Pauline method that “the indicative preceds the imperative.” But what Paul does first is pray . Simply reading verse 3 and following involves readers in a prayer of thanksgiving to God–and much more so for those listening to the…
Yesterday, I took part with my oldest son in a church-sponsored city outreach project (not because I’m especially prone to such behavior but because my son has a Boy Scout requirement that this would help him meet). Before we were sent out on our various jobs, the leader gave a…
There is a scene in Prince Caspian , the second in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia that helps explain why it is we have four Gospels, that is four accounts of the Good News of Jesus Christ—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It is the account of Lucy’s longed-for experience…
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Peter Lombard argued (Book 1, distinction 17 of the Sentences ) that the Spirit is both the love by which God loves us and the origin of the love by which we love Him: “the Holy Spirit is the Love [amor] of the Father and the Son, by which They…
In another chapter of the same book, Larsen argues that British secularization promoted by Dissenters within England, and on specifically theological grounds. According to the “Protestant Dissenters’ Catechism” (published 1772, by Samuel Palmer), a church is “a congregation, or voluntary soceity of Christians, who meet together to attend gospel ordinances…
In his book Contested Christianity (Baylor, 2004), Wheaton historian Timothy Larsen examines the reception of DF Strauss’s Life of Jesus in England. He suggests that only Darwin’s Origin of Species rivals Strauss’s book as a challenge to orthodoxy in Victorian England. Yet, the book’s impact had less to do with…
In response to my comments about the “road to Rome” charge, Eric Enlow of Handong International Law School writes: “I would connect sacramentalism with the road to Rome for an empirical reason. The individuals that I have known who have been most interested in sacramentalism have converted to Roman Catholicism.…
INTRODUCTION Manasseh undergoes a demonic “repentance”: Verse 3 says “he turned, he built,” using the Hebrew verb that normally designates repentance (“turn”). He “repents” of Hezekiah’s reforms. Because of this, the Lord determines to repeat in Jerusalem what he did in Shiloh (v. 12; cf. 1 Samuel 3:11; Jeremiah 19:3).…
2 Kings 20:8-11: Now Hezekiah said to Isaiah, What will be the sign that the Lord will heal me, and that I shall go up to the house of the Lord the third day? And Isaiah said, This shall be the sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord…
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