Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
While controversies over the writings of Paul continue in various corners of the intellectual globe, the word of God given through Paul and his scribe and all of the church’s interpreters and translators over the last two millennia is still readily available to the lofty and the lowly. Paul, as…
The second in a series of studies in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 22:30: A man shall not take his father’s wife, and shall not uncover his father’s wing (Hebrew: kanaf ). There are a number of unusual features in this law that mark it out from the previous context, indicating that it…
The texts of Christianity have been slowly at work, under the power of the Holy Spirit for 2000 years now. If we could be magically transported back into the world of two millennia ago, modern Americans would be shocked at the cruelty of that world. There was no concern for…
The Story of the Gadarene Madman is told in all three synoptic Gospels (Matthew 8:28-34, Mark 5:1-20, Luke 8:26-37). Jesus ventures into a Gentile area when He passes over the Sea of Galilee. Upon disembarking from his boat, he is immediately met by a demon-possessed madman. Upon meeting Jesus, he…
Part 1 of a multi-part series of studies on Deuteronomy 22:30-23:8. Eric Auerbach, in his classic work on Western literature, devotes his first chapter to contrasting Homer with the Bible. Of Homer, he writes of the “need of Homeric style to leave nothing which it mentions half in darkness and…
Trinity House Fellow James B. Jordan will be a speaker at an International Conference on Biblical Symbolism that will be held in Seoul on Monday, May 27 in 2013. He will address "The Importance of Biblical Symbolism and Symbolic Interpretation of the Bible." The conference will have three other speakers…
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R obert Solomon's The Joy of Philosophy is a defense of philosophy as a joyful wisdom, a la Solomon's philosophical hero, Nietzsche. Solomon knows that Nietzsche isn't even considered a philosopher by many: “His prose is too shimmering, too full of sarcasm and wise-cracks, too personal. He has too much…
F ew readers love Fanny Price. Some hate her as deeply as Mark Twain professed to hate her creator. CS Lewis had Screwtape call her “not only a Christian, but such a Christian—a vile, sneaking, simpering, demure, monosyllabic, mouselike, watery, insignificant, virginal, bread-and-butter miss . . . A two-faced little…
I n his Christian Ethics and the Church (67), Philip Turner provides a masterful summary of “the link Ephesians makes between the fulfillment of God's purpose, the perception of God's glory, and the common life of the assembly”: The members of God's assembly have been chosen ‘before the foundation of…
T wice in 1 Chronicles, David says he was prevented from building the temple because he shed “copious” blood (22:6–11; 28:2–7). The passages frame his final arrangements for the temple and his succession exhortations to Solomon. After analyzing the texts, Donald Murray concludes that “the core of [Yahweh's] objection to…
W illiam Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564. Baptized , but was he a Christian? The answer partly depends on what we think happens when someone is baptized. Many Christians believe that baptism marks the beginning of life as a Christian. I am one of those Christians. My short…
T he thesis of John Wright's 1993 essay on the Chronicler's account of David's census (1 Chronicles 21) is implausible. Commentators, he says, have read the Chronicler's narrative through the lens of 2 Samuel 24, which recounts the same event. Wright argues that the Chronicler doesn't retell the story of…
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