Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Bible depicts Man’s transformation from beas t to priest in and through Jesus Christ. Two sets of people have their garments designed by God in the Torah: Adam and Eve and priests (of which the High Priest’s garments garner most attention). The first garment is beastly, while the second…
I became the pastor of Westminster Bible Church in Bowling Green, Kentucky soon after completing my Ph.D. in church history. On paper, it was the ideal church for me. Even the name, I thought smacked of my preferences: the Westminster Confession with idealistic Biblicism. I didn’t know it had been,…
Why do we believe in the resurrection of Jesus? It itself, it is utterly unbelievable, as the two disciples on the road to Emmaus also concluded (Luke 24:19-24). But why is it so unbelievable? Are there not many stories of a dead man or woman coming back to life? Stories…
In the first installment of this two-part essay, we provided a rough outline of a thick theological account of Christian hope. We concluded with mention of important critiques of such traditional views on hope, that by orienting Christians to place their ultimate hope in God and the future consummation of…
Dare we hope in the midst of “ negative world ”? The idea of the “negative world” has recently served as a helpful framework for many to come to terms with the fact that Western societies (particularly the United States) are aggressively turning against their Christian roots and moral values.…
In his prologue, Luke tells us that his gospel history is an “orderly account” (1:3). Although generally chronological, time is not the only or the main organizing principle for his history. To argue for Luke’s main theme would take up too much space, but instead I want to explore one…
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As she has traveled in the US to promote Reading Lolita in Tehran , Azar Nafisi has heard a lot about the dismal state of reading in America. She wasn’t convinced, and begins her new book, The Republic of Imagination , with a defense of the American reader: “The majority…
Mark Greif’s The Age of the Crisis of Man exhumes a neglected thread of American intellectual history, a period from the early 30s to the early 70s when the “crisis of man” was on everyone’s mind. Though an intellectual history, Greif attends as much to novelists as to philosophers, arguing…
God set Jesus forth as a “ hilasterion in His blood” in order to achieve redemption (Romans 3:25). Theodore Jennings ( Outlaw Justice , 66), insistent on reading Paul politically, can’t quite make sense of this: “The text connects loyalty to blood. And this is exactly what a reader of…
“Gifts,” writes John Barclay ( Galatians and Christian Theology , 307), “typically express and reinforce a preexistent system of values.” Gifts are given to the deserving, and signify their merit. According to Paul, God’s gift of Christ is given to the un deserving, and that “dangerous and unsettling” gift (308)…
A strong angel hands John a book, not to read but to eat (Revelation 10). The instructions and John’s compliance (vv. 9b-11) are chiastically structured: a. He said, Take and eat. b. It will make your stomach bitter c. but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey. a’/d.…
John is commissioned to write to the seven churches of Asia (Revelation 1). He’s commissioned again as a prophet to prophesy (chapter 10).The reason is that his portfolio expands. He initially writes to the churches, and his visions have to do with the “land.” His second commission is to be…
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