Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For many people Christmas comes on December 25 and is over December 26. The tree is taken down along with the lights and the other decorations, and everyone begins setting the house in order for the new year. No more Christmas hymns. No more celebrations (well, until New Year’s Eve).…
The Ascension and the Incarnation should not be disconnected in our Christmas thinking or celebrations. As N.T. Wright notes, the ascension is "a central and vital feature without which all sorts of other things start to go demonstrably wrong. . . . where the ascension has been ignored or misunderstood,…
“In the Word was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness.” Thus John describes the incarnation of the Son. He comes as the living and life-giving light of the world. That’s good news. In the beginning, God spoke and light shone…
Christmas is all about Jesus. The angels announce Jesus’ birth, shepherds and wise men come to see Jesus, Herod wants to kill Jesus. We occasionally think of the Father who sent the Son, but we keep returning to the Son made flesh in Bethlehem’s manger. Meanwhile, as always, the Spirit…
Christmas is about many things, but one of the chief things revealed in the gospel of Christmas is the humility of God. We don't often think of humility as an attribute of God. If God is glorious and exalted, we think, He must be haughty and proud and self-centered. We…
John famously begins his Gospel with a piece of theology: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Matthew starts with a genealogy. John celebrates Advent with a hymn, Matthew with a list. For John, Jesus is the Word of creation…
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A fter nine long chapters of names, genealogies, and snippets of narrative, the Chronicler plunges the reader into a scene of frantic action: Saul's battle with the Philistines on Mount Gilboa (1 Chronicles 10; cf. 1 Samuel 31). The story of Israel's monarchy starts out as a sad story of…
I ‘ll return to blogging next week, with changes. Since I started blogging more than a decade ago, I've used my blog as a public notebook to record quotations I want to remember, summarize articles I've come across in research, explore a problem or question, mainly in biblical studies or…
T aking a summer break. I will return to blogging in the latter part of July.
I n the Holy Place of the tabernacle, there was a table toward the north, spread with twelve loaves of “showbread” or “bread of the presence.” To the south was a golden lampstand, seven lamps making a burning tree. The Holy Place provided a glimpse of Israel's place and mission…
D omenico Losurdo's “counter-history” of Liberalism is a long riff on a central paradox: Many of the founding fathers of modern liberal thought were indifferent to, or even advocates of, slavery. John Calhoun is a prime example: “This eminent statesman, vice president of the United States in the mid-nineteenth century,…
Kevin Giles's The Eternal Generation of the Son targets Evangelical theologians who deny the Son's eternal generation. He also challenges Evangelical theologians who teach that the Son is “functionally” but not ontologically subordinate to the Father, or subordinate in “role” though not in being, or eternally under the authority of…
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