Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Thus says the Lord: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more” (Jer 31:15). The Night of the Hunter belongs on every Christian’s Christmas list. My family has even…
One important part of Jesus's birth narrative is the presence of angels. The angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary, announcing that she would bear a son. And then, on the night Jesus was born, a whole host of angels appeared to the shepherds. Angels are mysterious creatures to us.…
I was settled nicely into my chair and listening to the conversation in an undergrad religion seminar, my last required course to graduate. Though a few Christians sat scattered around the room, the course itself was dedicated to poking holes in traditional understandings of the Bible: our readings deconstructed notions…
God’s symbols belong to Him and to His people. They are constantly at work in the world, including the world of film, music, painting, architecture, and other artforms. You cannot escape God’s symbols or the meaning He has woven into the created order. Artists use and borrow God’s symbols, whether…
For centuries, Christians identified Israel in the Old Testament as a single, literal ethnic group, often called “the Jews.” Even supersessionists – those who believed the Church superseded Israel – assumed the clear-cut, technical definition of “Israel” in the Bible is the ethnic group. However, a deeper dive into Genesis,…
Misreading Intent In the opening verses of Matthew 11, the reader is confronted immediately by John the baptizer who has been imprisoned since 4:12. John poses a question to Jesus, inquiring from prison as to whether or not he is Israel’s awaited Messiah or if they should anticipate another: “Are…
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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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