Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Part 1 We do not understand the role of women in ministry because we do not understand the role of men in ministry. We do not understand the role of men in ministry because we do not understand the church. We do not understand the church because the consumer culture…
1. One structure The Creation account (G1:1-2:4) conspicuously conveys meaning using the literary shape of the text. The narrative is told with formulaic patterns, repetitions, and parallelism. The Garden account is different. It is viewed as a separate text, with its own author, employing its own structure. This second account’s…
I was reading James Jordan’s Creation in Six Days while also preparing for Trinity Sunday in which the gospel reading is John 3:1-15. As providence would have it Jordan dropped an easter egg for me along the lines of baptism. In chapter 5 he points out, “ On the second…
It's true. There is no verse in the New Testament that commands or records an infant baptism. This poses a problem for some Christians. Those who only look for explicit commands, or those whose theology is limited to the New Testament, will conclude that infant baptism is not biblical and…
1. Goal This paper’s goal is to identify and describe a literary strategy employed by scripture, namely using two episodes that cover similar territory or themes using details drawn from opposite ends of a number of spectrums. Once described the reader may recognize numerous other instances of this strategy in…
Numbers 14 records the tragic story of Israel’s decision to rebel against Yahweh and Moses. Twelve spies had been sent into the land to bring back a report to Israel. All twelve spies agreed: “We went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey”…
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“Love is as strong as death, and jealousy as Sheol.” A fine sentiment, but what does it mean? Maybe it means that love is as inevitable as death. We’re all going to die; our last resting place in this creation is the grave. Perhaps Solomon says that love is inevitable…
In his contribution to Searching the Scriptures , Roger Aus examines Mark 14:25 (Jesus says, “I will never again drink the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God”). He takes its as a Nazirite vow to refrain from wine until…
Stephen Turley ( The Ritualized Revelation of the Messianic Age ) doesn't think standard treatments of Paul's baptismal formula in Galatians 3 get the point. The standard options - ex opere operato and ex opere operantis - share the “common false assumption: they both place pistis and baptizein in a…
Early in Revelation, the Father is described as the one who “is and who was and who comes” (Revelation 1:4). 1:8 suggests that the Trinity might be described in the same way. The Trinity is not a God immune to time; the eternality of the Trinity is the eternality of…
Hal Foster's Bad New Days is an assessment of the past twenty-five years of European and American art. Foster organizes his treatment under five themes - Abject, Archival, Mimetic, Precarious, and Post-Critical? One will notice that “beauty” is absent. Today's avant garde makes Francis Bacon look tame. One of Foster's…
Psalm 136 is a dialogic Psalm in which the second line of each verse is the same: “For His lovingkindness is everlasting.” The God of lovingkindness is the God of gods and Lord of lords. He is the Creator of sun, moon, stars, sea, and sky. He delivered Israel from…
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