Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
When might the Gospel according to Matthew have been written? Of course, any answer can only be speculation, but that does not mean we are reduced to groundless opinion. In this series of articles I point the way to an approach different from the general consensus among scholars today which…
In my first essay on “synopticity” I offered a rather rough definition of the phenomenon and important, though not exhaustive examples. In this essay, I want to introduce broader aspects of the phenomenon of “synopticity.” The first example that I have in mind is conventional stories, stories of different historical…
Since the judgment of Babel was followed by the initiation of the circumcision, the impending end of the circumcision in AD70 explains the significance of the first century miracle of foreign tongues. Except for a few Aramaic “teasers” in the book of Daniel, the Word of God was monolingual and…
To the best of my knowledge “synopticity” is not a word used in theology or Biblical studies, but it seems an appropriate word to describe the kind of phenomena associated with the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These three Gospels tell essentially the same story with significant — sometimes…
Humor is a funny thing. It is altogether familiar yet also mysterious. What makes us laugh? Why do we find things funny? There are academic fields of study dedicated to discovering what makes things humorous. These academicians even have a journal entitled International Journal of Humor Research . No joke.…
Out of all the characters in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales , the Pardoner has been called the “one lost soul.” The pious Parson, who closes out the collection of tales with a sermon on the seven deadly sins and how a sinner can absolve himself of them, connects the…
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Galileo Goes To Jail , a 2009 collection of essays edited by Ronald Numbers, examines 25 myths of science and religion. The essays aren't defenses of religion by any means; they instead aim at complicating the received scientific triumphalism and set records straight. Maurice A. Finocchiaro tackles myth #8, that…
The late Billy Graham from a 1 959 issue of Christianity Today . 1959!! One of the pet words of this age is "tolerance." It is a good word, but we have tried to stretch it over too great an area of life. We have applied it too often where…
"Modernity," writes Jason A. Josephson-Storm, "is first and foremost the sign of a rupture . . . a device for positing significant historical breaks" ( The Myth of Disenchantment , 7). By designating something as "modern," we associate it with novelty, up-to-dateness, "the current." But modernity is also a spatial…
Frances Young ( God's Presence , 173-4) offers this summary of the post-Nicene consensus concerning the image of God in man: "Athanasius and the Cappadocians, those who fashioned the notion of theopoiesis / theosis and recognized that it implied Nicene orthodoxy, were those who had a sense of the interrelationship…
Everyone wonders - children, “savages,” men and women at one another. Philosophers wonder too, Rosenzweig says ( Understanding the Sick and the Healthy ), but they respond to wonder differently from the rest of us. The rest of us are “adrift on the river Life, borne on, wonderment and all.”…
Sociologists, Rosenstock-Huessy charges, often formulate their theories in this fashion: "an obscure Force A and a Relation B . . . affect Mr Y." Sociologists "pretend that their science address a nameless world" ( In the Cross of Reality , 4). No such nameless world exists: "X and Y are…
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