Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I grew up in the 1950s. This was before the "Sixties" and the democratization, informalization, and general cheapening of the church and her worship. Ministers were Father Donovan, Pastor Eckhart, Reverend MacPherson, Mister (Episcopal) Parker, and Brother Smith. Liturgical speech was high language, sounding kind of like the King James…
Metaphor exerts a surprisingly powerful influence within our thinking. Although it is easily dismissed as little more than a figure of speech, when we attend more closely to the ways in which we use it, metaphor’s importance swiftly becomes more apparent. Although many of our metaphors have become quite invisible…
What is a tree, scientifically speaking? A mere googling gives the following answer: “a woody perennial plant, typically having a single stem or trunk growing to a considerable height and bearing lateral branches at some distance from the ground.” We can increase detail by describing its family, genus, species and…
The majority of Western evangelical Christians rarely, if ever, fast as a form of spiritual discipline. In our culture, fasting is more connected with dieting than worship, the other side of our deeply ambiguous fascination with food. Food is everywhere. We eat more than ever before, at greater speed, and…
A Grammar of Creation An understanding of the visual-musical language of the Bible must begin with Genesis 1. This is fortunate, because when explaining biblical types to academics, as opposed to children, one is repeatedly forced to start from scratch. From birth, a healthy child is attuned to rhythm and…
In an inverse Eden, a land laid waste, one works alone tending the trash. There are none like him in all the earth, inquisitive, playful and most drawn to those mysterious, dancing bipedal creatures who lost earth and left it to go wandering the vast wilderness of space. Humans have…
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“To the Jew first”: The first time this is used in Romans, it’s good news for Jews, because Paul says that the gospel is the power of God to salvation to the Jew first (1:18). The next time he uses the phrase, things are a bit different. He has been…
Romans 2:1 forms a rather neat chiasm, particularly if we follow the Greek word order: Therefore, you are without excuse O man everyone who judges for in that you judge (KRINO) the other yourself you condemn (KATAKRINO) for the same things you practice one who judges The exchange at the…
Jouette Bassler’s article on “Divine Impartiality in Romans” (NovT, 1984) also includes a neat discussion of the structure of Romans 2:12-29. She points out the sequence of terms as Paul introduces the issues of law (NOMOS) and circumcision (PERITOME). “Law” first becomes an issue in v 12, in the negative…
Thinking is an odd sort of enterprise. It is spaceless, yet it has certain features of spatiality. For instance: I puzzle over an issue for weeks, making virtually no progress, and then read a billboard or see a preview on a video I’ve rented, and suddenly things fall into place.…
In many respects, the issues in the current “Auburn Avenue” debate are not at all new to the Reformed world. There have been differences concerning sacramental efficacy, apostasy, antinomian/neonomianism, and other related issues. What reasons do we have to hope that this time things will be more fully resolved this…
Perhaps Sigurd, like Orestes, marks the beginning of a new order. Before Sigurd, the only absolute loyalties in the world of the Volsungs were family loyalties, loyalties of blood. Signy has no loyalty to her husband and encourages Sigmund to kill her sons. But Sigurd seems as loyal to his…
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