Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
“We have a God who hides things because He loves to be sought out, chewed out and found out.” As Christians, we are rightly taught that we must not question God’s Word. The problem is that the Scriptures record many things which appear to have been given to us for…
The book of Revelation is a liturgy. John begins “in the Spirit” on the “Lord’s day” (1:10). Jesus appears, and Jesus tells him to record messages to seven churches, words of encouragement and rebuke, like the call to worship and confession at the beginning of a Christian liturgy. In chapter…
In my previous posts, I looked at the theme of creation as it is found in a sequence of psalms devoted to Yahweh’s Kingship (Psalms 93-100). Among other matters, these psalms declare that when the Kingdom of Israel’s God comes, it is the Kingdom of the world’s own Creator .…
The church in Corinth was a pastoral nightmare. Factionalism, sexual immorality, incipient syncretism, using the church as a stage for self-promotion, and denial of the final resurrection were just some of the problems. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church, he confronts each of these problems directly and in…
The first chapters of the Word of God have a poetic rhythm. This is used to discredit their accuracy as historical narrative, but the truth is that these same rhythms continue far beyond the book of Genesis. In fact, the later texts shed light on the frustratingly succinct account of…
Mr. Martian: What’s that there? Mr. Edison: (Edison holds up a standard, 60 watt lightbulb). It’s a lightbulb. Mr. Martian: A “lightbulb” you say? What exactly is a “lightbulb”? Mr. Edison: A lightbulb is an object used to illuminate a dark area, say a room. It’s made primarily of filament…
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INTRODUCTION One of the earliest Christological controversies in the church was provoked by Nestorius, who denied that Mary was the “God-bearer” (Greek, theotokos). The controversy was not about Mary, but about the nature of Christ: Was the eternal Son of God born as a baby? Unbelievable as it was, the…
Luther was famously hostile to the book of Esther. Luther was also famously enamoured of the idea of the Deus absconditus, the hidden God. These positions are inconsistent: No book of the Bible better narrates the power and providence of the hidden God than Esther, which refrains even from naming…
Protestants, rightly, protest at a number of Roman Catholic claims about Mary. At times, Protestants distort and exaggerate Roman Catholic teachings. That is unfortunate, since the official Catholic teaching is objectionable enough by itself. And the errors of Marian doctrine reveal some of the underlying problems of Roman Catholic theology…
Luke 1:53: He has filled the hungry with good things. Luke’s gospel is a gospel of reversals. God chooses a humble young woman on the margins of Israel to be the mother of the Savior. While Augustus Caesar is reigning in Rome, Jesus is born on the outskirts of empire,…
Mothering an infant is a thankless task. First, you have to carry a large, heavy pouch wherever you go for a number of months. Then comes the agony of labor. The momentary joy of birth is immediately followed by the prolonged inconvenience of nursing, changing diapers, comforting an infant at…
In his fascinating book on aging and the brain ( The Wisdom Paradox , 2005), Elkhonon Goldberg focuses attention on the phenomenon of “pattern recognition,” the “ability to recognize a new object or a new problem as a member of an already familiar class of objects of problems.” With experience,…
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