Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Why there is more to Jephthah than meets than eye It was not that long ago that I realized the Jephthah-story and the Jesus-story were basically the same story. Sounds crazy, I know. But here is a one-paragraph synopsis of both: The people of God have gone their own way,…
G.K. Chesterton famously said that the Gospels don’t reveal Jesus’ mirth. It’s true we never catch Jesus laughing. But can we believe He never did? I don’t think so. Laughter is human, and Jesus was fully human. Jesus promised that those who mourned would laugh. He mourned; would He not…
Matthew 2 has all the elements of an exodus story. There’s a murderous king, who slaughters Jewish babies. There’s a infant who will be Israel’s future deliverer, saved from the murderous king so He can later return to save His people and lead them to the Promised land. There’s an…
The calendar of Israel was primarily theological, centered on commemorating the salvific acts of God, but also agricultural, celebrating the creation-restoring effects of those salvific acts. The feasts of the first month celebrated the reviving of the world in the Spring, and typified the cutting off of the Savior in…
The chiastic shape corresponds to the shape of human life. This should not surprise us, because we are made in the image of God, and God is manifest in Word and Spirit. If we are living epistles, our lives will look a bit like the literary shape of the books…
Back in January, Venkatesh Rao wrote a fascinating post on the Ribbonfarm blog, discussing different forms of models of narrative. Engaging with Ursula LeGuin’s talk ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’ , Rao explores her contrast between the (male) ‘hero narrative’ and the (female) ‘carrier-bag story’, and suggests a third…
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Romans 6: ?Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore, we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father,…
Ahab and Jezebel had little interest in Torah, the commandments that Yahweh had delivered to Israel on Sinai. Ahab continued to promote the idolatry of Jeroboam the son of Nebat. He discovered that Jeroboam?s idolatry was not robust enough for his tastes, so he promoted Baal worship, and sat by…
A number of recent studies of the Elizabethan stage have emphasized its Christian dimensions. Debora Shuger writes, “if it is not plausible to read Shakespeare’s plays as Christian allegories, neither is it likely that the popular drama of a religiously saturated culture could, by a secular miracle, have extricated itself…
The obituaries and eulogies for John Paul II will be written in superlatives. That is as it should be. A handful of men were responsible for the collapse of the Soviet regime, the evil empire that tyrannized millions and cast a shadow over the 20th century, and the Pope was…
The following notes repeat a number of things from previous posts on this site. INTRODUCTION How does Romans 8 fit into the overall flow of Romans? First, Paul has announced the gospel of God?s righteousness, revealed from faith to faith (1:16-17). God?s righteousness involves His faithfulness to His promises to…
I have found it useful to think about hermeneutics by considering how jokes mean what they mean. Jokes mean “intertextually,” that is, only in relation to presupposed texts and discourses and cultural practices that are present in the joke only as a “trace.” Shrek is a great example; nothing in…
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