Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
There’s something about joy that is infectious. And occasionally, we all have the opportunity to be in someone’s presence who is so happily engaged in their work, so joyous in their pursuits, that we want to learn from them. We want to know where that joy comes from and attain…
Jesus has told us that He intends all nations to be discipled. Nations. Not just individuals. All nations as theocracies. That being the case, the Church exists for the life of the world. Being baptized is not only a matter of becoming part of a new family, it is also…
Harold Bloom’s essay on Macbeth includes the kind of penetrating insights that make Bloom the great Shakespearean scholar that he is, but it also includes his typical and intense anti-Christian bias. “If Lear was pre-Christian, then Macbeth is weirdly post-Christian. There are, as we have seen, Christian intimations that haunt…
Revelation 16 is a day of atonement text. The tabernacle of the testimony has been opened (15:5). The angels who receive the bowls are clothed in linen (15:6), the clothing of the high priest when he goes into the sanctuary on the day of atonement (Leviticus 16:4). The temple is…
From time to time, when I’ve lectured on how to read the Bible, I’ve used art-music as one example thereof. When we listen to a simple folk song, we hear the same melody over and over again, but this is not how composers write "high" music. Let me amplify. A…
"For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea-monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:40). Some reflections on Jonah’s Big Fish have led to the following essay. Let me…
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The following is an abstract for a conference paper that I will be presenting in January 2005. Church history has often been regarded by the professional historians as a quaint hagiographic outpost for the pious. Globalization, along with developments within the historical profession, suggest that the time is propitious for…
Here are some quotations from Clifford Ronan’s fascinating study of Roman plays in early modern England, Antike Rome (University of Georgia, 1995). “We moderns often overlook the playfulness and garishness of Antiquity, thinking instead of weather-beaten bleached marble Doric columns, gleaming in the noonday Mediterranean sun. But to the Renaissance,…
When, in the European consciousness, did the Roman Empire end? 404 or 476 make sense, but I wonder if the Reformation was the true end of imperial Rome. Protestants frequently saw continuities of some sort between the Roman imperial authority and papal authority, and what they saw opening before their…
J. H. Bavinck’s An Introduction to the Science of Missions (first published in English in 1960) is superb. Bavinck is flexible and balanced, yet principled, in dealing with the myriad complications of missionary work. He is aware of developments in cultural anthropology and other fields that give assistance to missionaries.…
Perhaps we could call it a sanctified form of paranoia. In his Introduction to the Science of Missions , J. H. Bavinck calls attention to Israel’s striking awareness of being watched by the nations around them. If Israel perishes at Sinai, flamed by Yahweh’s wrath, the nations will blaspheme (Ex…
Perhaps we could call it a sanctified form of paranoia. In his Introduction to the Science of Missions , J. H. Bavinck calls attention to Israel’s striking awareness of being watched by the nations around them. If Israel perishes at Sinai, flamed by Yahweh’s wrath, the nations will blaspheme (Ex…
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