Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the 48th year, the third month, and the fourteenth night, while I slept in my bed, I was taken in vision to Xanadu and set upon a high hill. Looking to the west, I saw a large building, surrounded with gardens and fountains, walks and gravestones, and a bell…
‘Tis the season to be informed–sometimes in gentleness, often with vigor–by a variety of Christians (and others) 1 claiming that it is wrong to celebrate Christmas. I have no desire to force anyone to celebrate Christmas against their will. Indeed, it would be insulting to the high holiday to pretend…
Part 2: The Enoch Factor Back in Open Book 21 we discussed "The Enoch Factor." Because that was several years ago (May 1994) and many people have begun reading this letter since that time, we shall return to the subject here and expand what we wrote at that time. After…
Day 6. The sixth day provides the creation of land animals and of humanity. As we saw above, the second day spills over to the first half of the third day, for only at that point did God say that it was good. Similarly, it seems that the fifth day…
During the past two decades, the "quest of the historical Jesus" has entered a new phase. The first incarnation of the quest was rudely shaken by the publication of Albert Schweitzer’s classic Quest of the Historical Jesus , easily the most devastating and funniest work of New Testament scholarship ever…
At the 1997 Biblical Horizons Summer Conference, the Rev. Jeffrey Meyers presented a series of remarkable lectures on the gospel of Mark. Among his many insightful comments, he suggested that the second gospel continues where the first gospel ends; Matthew ends with Jesus saying "Go" (Matthew 28:19), and Mark’s shows…
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The “do Muslims and Christians worship the same God?” controversy surges on, reported most recently in the Economist . It's worth revisiting. In an earlier post, I charged that the claim that Muslims and Christians worship the same God (what I will call the “identity theory”) implicitly denies a central…
In an article on Revelation, J. Daryl Charles observes that the Roman Empire “had brought about the ‘solution' - ‘salvation' for the human race - and was thus worthy of popular adoration. Empire-adoration necessitated a personal symbol which the ancient city-state could not generate. In the Imperial cult resided the…
In his packed little book, Theology and the Spaces of Apocalyptic , Cyril O'Regan observes that “there seems to be a binary opposition in the modern world between apocalyptic and the discipline of theology” (15). Heterodox apocalyptic is everywhere, in Milton and Blake and Romanticism, among Hegelians, especially those on…
G. Biguzzi asks whether the city “Babylon” (Revelation 17-18) represents Rome or Jerusalem. The first option was presented early, by Victorinus. He “(i) gives the circumlocution, ‘city of Rome,' as toe equivalent of Babylon: . . . ruina Babylonis, id est civitatis Romanae, (ii) identifies the seven mountains of Rev…
Medieval biblical scholars read Scripture through the lens of the quadriga, fourfold sense of Scripture. Texts had a literal sense, an allegorical or Christological sense, a tropological or moral sense, and an anagogical sense. In his recent study of de Lubac, Between Apocalypse and Eschaton , Joseph Flipper focuses on…
Here's some seasoned advice to young scholars on how to write an introduction. 1. Write the book first. You don't know what the book is about until you finish it, and you can't introduce what you don't know. This may seem backwards, but it is inevitable, because a thing is…
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