Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Inspired by the “Moscow Mood” Debate In a shocking 1961 study, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram would don an official-looking white lab coat and tell a volunteer to administer increasing shocks to another “volunteer” in an adjacent room strapped into an “electric chair” just out of sight. The shocks were incrementally…
My title and the substance of the article are borrowed from a section of David Wenham’s excellent book, Paul: Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity? I am appropriating ideas from the pages in his book which address the question, “Why Does Paul refer to Jesus’ Life and Ministry so…
Some of us may be familiar with the notion that the epistle of James is like a New Testament version of Proverbs or other wisdom literature. According to this line of thinking, the epistle of James (together with the other wisdom literature) is basically a collection of timeless sayings without…
This summer I started walking a long trail that ran north from our home. On my best days, I would walk a total of five miles at a brisk pace. This trail follows the power lines that serve a significant portion of North Dallas and stretches far past the two…
I am an Australian. I went to the American Academy of Religion mega-fest last year to meet up with some friends, to present a paper at a ‘science and religion’ panel, and to marvel at the sheer scale of how Americans do things. It was quite a ride. Looking at…
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 We evangelicals do not often understand the roles of men and women in ministry. Because our consumerist culture has gutted the notion of family as it was historically understood, all Biblical passages about women in church ministry (a familial organism) are almost incomprehensible to…
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Paul Griffiths ( Decreation ) ably defends a minority position in the history of theology, namely, that angels are not bodiless, though they are “immaterial.” They are “living creatures with discarnate bodies of energy” (125). To defend this point, he offers this brilliant little analysis of the meaning of “matter”…
The final sequence of Revelation begins with the fourth “in Spirit” vision of John (21:9-10). From that point to the end of the book, the “Lamb” is mentioned 7 times (21:9, 14, 22, 23, 27; 22:1, 3). The Lamb is entering His Sabbath, the wedding feast with His Bridal city.…
Elijah's life history tracks closely with that of Moses. When he appears on the scene, he curses Israel with drought, then flees the land (1 Kings 17). Like Moses after he killed the Egyptian, he goes out from his people and lives among Gentiles. (Elijah's sojourn in Zarephath also linked…
When the seventh trumpet blows, heaven opens and the ark of the covenant appears (Revelation 11:19). We're in the Most Holy Place. Before the ark-throne are two heavenly signs - a laboring woman and a dragon. It's Zechariah 3, with Satan and the priest Joshua before the throne, Satan accusing.…
Following a long tradition, Paul Griffiths says that creatures who come from nothing are constantly inclined to return to the nihil . We “remain uneasily in being, hovering over the void from which we came” ( Decreation , 142). Venerable as this is, it's misconceived. For starters we can ask…
As Andrei Zorin argues in a TLS piece this week, Tolstoy intended to defy novelistic convention in writing War and Peace . His book was not a novel, and Tolstoy refused the easy resolutions of the novel genre. Zorin agrees that there is something to this: “In one of the…
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