Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). The famous definition of faith with which the eleventh chapter of Hebrews opens has received a number of different interpretations. The crux of the problem is the interpretation of the words translated in…
This essay is an exploration of one element of the final of the four Gospels, the Gospel of John. My thesis is that the Gospel of John answers the issue of "friendship" being a homoerotic category. It challenges the "Greek Way of Love and Friendship" 1 It is indeed the…
"And I also way to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it" (Matthew 16:18). Matthew 16:13ff. has historically been one of the most oft-cited passages of Scripture. Throughout the Middle Ages, it was used…
Matthew 8-9 records three clusters of miracles, interspersed with snatches of Jesus’ teaching about various aspects of discipleship. Just as the Sermon on the Mount displays the authority of Jesus’ Word in teaching, these chapters display the authority of Jesus’ Word over sickness, uncleanness, the creation, demons, and death. In…
The association of women and wells in the Scriptures has long been noted by theologians, a symbolism closely connected to marriage which begins in Genesis and climaxes in Revelation. There is a lesson drawn in the water of wells that I’d like to explore, but before that I must trace…
Of course, since the Israelites had agriculture, Solomon was not paleolithic as that term is used today. But "paleo" is simply a prefix meaning old or previous , the opposite of "neo." In that sense, I wonder if we might understand Solomon better if we interpret his statements and riddles…
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In a 1953 speech delivered in New York marking the 20th anniversary of the Holodomor, the Ukrainian famine, Raphael Lemkin retold the chilling story of the Soviet Union's deliberate liquidation of Ukraine's churches, its “soul” and its “brain.” “Going along with this attack on the intelligentsia was an offensive against…
Psalm 45 begins as a song of praise by a court poet for a victorious king. Halfway through it turns into an epithalamion. As a complete poem, it a rollicking ol' romance. After the opening promise to compose a “made-thing” (Heb., ma'asah ) for the king, the poet celebrates the…
On the third day after Jesus’ death, women came to the tomb to dress the body and found the tomb empty, heard from angels that Jesus had risen from the dead, and shortly after encountered Jesus Himself. It really happened. If it really happened, then the power of tyrants is…
Holy Saturday is the mystery of God’s silence, and it is a great mystery. But the Son of God cannot claim Sheol as its Lord without turning death upside down. Death cannot hold Him. He is too big. Silence cannot muzzle the eternal Word, not forever. His descent is harrowing…
Jesus’ death does not contradict His sovereignty. It is a revelation of His sovereign Lordship. Jesus’ life and death reveals that God is Lord not only over all things He is Lord in all things. He is not only Lord over the safe confines of heaven, but Lord in the…
Anthony Pagden is worried about the rise of religion in the past several decades ( The Enlightenment: And Why It Still Matters ). He fears “the outcome might indeed be something close to the nightmare dreamed up by the contemporary American philosopher and psychologist Daniel Dennett: ‘The Enlightenment is long…
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