Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Part 1 We do not understand the role of women in ministry because we do not understand the role of men in ministry. We do not understand the role of men in ministry because we do not understand the church. We do not understand the church because the consumer culture…
1. One structure The Creation account (G1:1-2:4) conspicuously conveys meaning using the literary shape of the text. The narrative is told with formulaic patterns, repetitions, and parallelism. The Garden account is different. It is viewed as a separate text, with its own author, employing its own structure. This second account’s…
I was reading James Jordan’s Creation in Six Days while also preparing for Trinity Sunday in which the gospel reading is John 3:1-15. As providence would have it Jordan dropped an easter egg for me along the lines of baptism. In chapter 5 he points out, “ On the second…
It's true. There is no verse in the New Testament that commands or records an infant baptism. This poses a problem for some Christians. Those who only look for explicit commands, or those whose theology is limited to the New Testament, will conclude that infant baptism is not biblical and…
1. Goal This paper’s goal is to identify and describe a literary strategy employed by scripture, namely using two episodes that cover similar territory or themes using details drawn from opposite ends of a number of spectrums. Once described the reader may recognize numerous other instances of this strategy in…
Numbers 14 records the tragic story of Israel’s decision to rebel against Yahweh and Moses. Twelve spies had been sent into the land to bring back a report to Israel. All twelve spies agreed: “We went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey”…
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Martyrs share in Jesus' suffering and death. Martyrs also come to life as Jesus did. This is what John calls the “first resurrection” (Revelation 20:5). That is the argument presented by GB Caird ( Revelation of St. John the Divine , 255). Jesus' resurrection, he argues, “had a double sequel,…
In a lively exchange with Eugene McCarraher , John Milbank summarizes his views on democracy. Like Chesterton, he is a defender of the democracy of the dead, and he insists that this is not simply “a defense of the given and an assault on the present.” That is, he claims,…
“Despite the central role which the priesthood played in Israel's life and worship,” writes Nicholas Haydock ( The Theology of the Levitical Priesthood ), it has only a small role in “the majority of Old Testament theologies” (xii). This neglect is partly due to the influence of Wellhausen's documentary thesis,…
There are a number of “seconds” in the book of Revelation. References to the “second death” surround the book (2:11; 20:6, 14; 21:8), and there is a second seal (6:3), a second woe (11:14), and several second angels (8:8; 14:8; 16:3). The living creatures are enumerated, the lion first, the…
In his introduction to Scott Cairns's collection, Slow Pilgrim , Gregory Wolfe recounts Cairns's development as a poet. He grew up “within a powerful religious subculture that splits the spirit off from the letter, reducing faith to didactic legalism. These fellow religionists of his youth loved nothing better than to…
JT Fraser begins one of his essays in Time and Time Again with this lovely sketch of a musical cosmology: “The noble English art of change ringing consists of the ringing of a set of bells of different pitches, according to sequences that follow stable mathematical patterns. A set of…
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