Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Paradosis Center at John Brown University in Siloam Spring, Arkansas, put on its first conference last week, it was a remarkable event. It was an ecumenical conference including Orthodox (John Behr, Edith Humphrey, others), Catholic (Rusty Reno, Michael Root, others), and Evangelical (Timothy George, David Lyle Jeffrey). Unusually for…
Naphtali Meshel observes in his new The "Grammar" of Sacrifice that scholars have been talking for decades about the "grammatical" character of ritual and sacrifice in general, but have never actually analyzed a specific ritual or sacrificial system grammatically. Some even talk about a "universal grammar" of sacrifice "even though…
Some Christians are rather breezy about the problem of evil. We shouldn't be. Do I need to remind you of the grisly beheadings that have taken place over the past few weeks? Do I need to remind you of the blood of innocents that’s been spilled in our own country?…
Have you ever been to a wedding where the heavens opened and a voice declared the couple “husband and wife”? Few of us have. Beautiful as they are, most marriages are quite mundane. Yet when Jesus talks about marriage, He describes it as something that God does: “What God has…
Jesus is the last and greatest of the Prophets. He is the Prophet that Moses predicted (Deuteronomy 18). That means He gives the final word, brings the blueprints for the final temple, speaks the final world into existence, and has complete and permanent access to the divine court, where He…
Paul stands against those who are “troubling” or “disturbing” the Galatians churches ( tarasso ; 1:7; also in 5:10). The reference seems to be two great troublers from the Old Testament. First, Achan is described as a “troubler” for the problems he causes in the aftermath of the battle at…
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As is well known from Confessions , Faustus played a crucial role in Augustine’s formation. As a young Manichean Auditor and devotee of astrology, Augustine puzzled over philosophical and quasi-scientific conundrums that he wanted to pose to a Manichean master. When Bishop Faustus visited Carthage, Augustine found him affable, humble,…
Though Augustine had the arsenal of the contra Iudaeos tradition at hand in responding to Faustus, he had become dissatisfied with it. After his debate with Fortunatus the Manichean, Augustine had embarked on a deep study of Paul and Genesis and came to recognize the weaknesses of this tradition, whose…
When Augustine turns to the typology of unclean foods in his reply to Faustus, he introduces a linguistic analogy that lays a foundation for the later arguments. Paul’s claim that all things are clean (1 Timothy 4:4) does not contradict the Old Testament, since Paul is talking about the nature…
Revelation 12-14 roughly follows the sequence of the first half of the week of creation. The overall movement is from heaven to sea to earth. Genesis 1 begins with light, then the separation of waters above and below, the formation of sea and land. We can be more specific. Land…
In The Dome of Eden , Stephen Webb wonders what might have happened if J. Gresham Machen, Princeton theologian and founder of Westminster Theological Seminary, had been at the Scopes trial. In Webb's account, Machen's main concern was to challenge the naturalistic presumptions of Darwinism: “Machen never rejected the basic…
In Purity Rabbinic Judaism (46), Jacob Neusner comments on the role of liquidity in the purity system: “Dry inanimate objects or food are not susceptible to uncleanness. What is wet is susceptible. So liquids activate the system.” A dead animal on a pile of grain contaminates only the grain that…
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