Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Thus says the Lord: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more” (Jer 31:15). The Night of the Hunter belongs on every Christian’s Christmas list. My family has even…
One important part of Jesus's birth narrative is the presence of angels. The angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary, announcing that she would bear a son. And then, on the night Jesus was born, a whole host of angels appeared to the shepherds. Angels are mysterious creatures to us.…
I was settled nicely into my chair and listening to the conversation in an undergrad religion seminar, my last required course to graduate. Though a few Christians sat scattered around the room, the course itself was dedicated to poking holes in traditional understandings of the Bible: our readings deconstructed notions…
God’s symbols belong to Him and to His people. They are constantly at work in the world, including the world of film, music, painting, architecture, and other artforms. You cannot escape God’s symbols or the meaning He has woven into the created order. Artists use and borrow God’s symbols, whether…
For centuries, Christians identified Israel in the Old Testament as a single, literal ethnic group, often called “the Jews.” Even supersessionists – those who believed the Church superseded Israel – assumed the clear-cut, technical definition of “Israel” in the Bible is the ethnic group. However, a deeper dive into Genesis,…
Misreading Intent In the opening verses of Matthew 11, the reader is confronted immediately by John the baptizer who has been imprisoned since 4:12. John poses a question to Jesus, inquiring from prison as to whether or not he is Israel’s awaited Messiah or if they should anticipate another: “Are…
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“God speaks in Jesus in and through the texts of the Old and New Testament,” writes Francis Watson in an appreciative critique of Robert Jenson's Systematic Theology . “These texts do not merely report divine speaking, they enact it; and that they do so is the distinctive work of the…
In a 2002 essay on “The Bible and the Trinity, Jenson reflected on the Trinitarian features of Genesis 22, the Aqedah. Some are obvious and traditional - the relationship between the Angel of Yahweh and Yahweh. Some not so much. Jenson stresses that the issue at stake in Yahweh's test…
David Turner offers a detailed study of Jesus' “woes” to the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23 ( Israel's Last Prophet ). He sets the polemic in the context of a Deuteronomistic theological perspective as employed by the prophets of Israel. Together, these add up to a “motif of prophetic…
Here’s an effort to summarize Robert Jenson’s take on God-and-time, written with faux-Jensonesque pithiness. Is God eternally and infinitely the eternal and infinite God that He is? Of course. He’s God. Is God dependent on creation for His fulfillment? Of course not. He’s God. The biblical God uniquely does not…
Robert Jenson begins his classic The Triune Identity with a succinct analysis of the religious import of human action. “Every human action moves from what was to what is to be: It is carried and filled by tradition but intends new creation” (1). Every action proposes and is something new;…
In his closing at one of the second-tier GOP Presidential debate, Governor Bobby Jindal expressed a perspective that is common among conservative Christians: “The reality is the idea of America is slipping away. As Christians, we believe that the tomb is empty. As Americans, we believe that our best days…
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