Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
1 Chronicles 9:1 seems to bring the genealogies of 1 Chronicles to an end. The Chronicler has recorded the genealogy of the human race from Adam, focusing on the descendants of Abraham through Jacob. Summing it all up, he says, “So all Israel was enrolled by genealogies; and behold, they…
The “personalist” understanding of the Trinity, articulated most influentially in the work of John Zizioulas, has fallen on hard times. Recent scholars have attacked Zizioulas’s idea that Cappadocian Trinitarianism represented an ontological revolution, hammering on the distinction between divine and human personhood. Michel Barnes’s conclusion is the most drastic of…
Biblical Theology is often defined as the historical unfolding of God’s revelation, or of God’s revelation and of the history of his covenantal redemption and transformation of humanity and the world. In practice, Biblical Theology is usually broader than this, and also includes the study of literary structure and of…
We are made to be happy. Created to enter into the eternal joy of God, our whole being inclines to that end, but the fallen world has put forth barriers and by our own sin we bar ourselves from that endless delight, and death blinds us to that reality. Yet…
At the end of Revelation, John sees the heavenly city descending to earth. The city shines with the brilliance of God's glory, which lightens the nations, so that kings bring their glory to the city. This is not a vision of the final new heaven and new earth. It's a…
“No one has ever seen God,” writes John (John 1:18). If this is the case, then how can we speak about God? Some people say we actually cannot. Or at least we cannot speak about God positively, i.e. who He is. We can only say who or what God is…
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M arjorie Garber ( Shakespeare After All , 300–2) nicely captures the Pauline resonances of the trial scene in Merchant of Venice : “Shylock will provide a scale to weigh the pound of flesh, but not a surgeon to staunch the wound. He will, that is, provide the emblem of…
I n a 1911 article on “The Ant Colony as Organism,” William Morton Wheeler argued that an ant colony was not only organism-like but an actual organism: “Like a cell or the person, it behaves as a unitary whole, maintaining its identity in space, resisting dissolution...neither a thing nor a…
I an Boxall gets a lot right in his commentary on Revelation 6:9–11 (in his excellent The Revelation of Saint John , 113). He knows that the blood of a purification offering is poured out at the base of the altar, the very position where the souls of the martyrs…
W riting in 1888, J. Theodore Bent described a visit to Patmos, during which he read the Apocalypse. One day, he recounted, “I stood by the sea looking south-west, I distinctly saw Thera, as it was anciently called, rising out of the sea. This island is now also called Thera…
Bede ( Latin Commentaries on Revelation , 133-5) interprets the list of Israel's tribes in Revelation 7 by etymologizing the names. The list forms a sequence, from Judah to Benjamin. Judah means “confession or praise” and is placed first because “before the beginning of confession, no one attains the heights…
V iolent malice can be directed against God, the self, and the neighbor, Virgil tells Dante ( Inferno 11) as they huddle under the lid of one of the tombs in the sixth circle of hell. Virgil takes a moment to explain the moral theology that organizes hell. He explicates…
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