Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
References to the Son of Man coming on the clouds occur five times in the Synoptic Gospels. Three times such expressions appear in the parallel accounts of the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24:30; Mark 13:36; Luke 21:27). Then, in parallel accounts of Jesus’ trial before the leaders of Israel, such expressions…
Just what the difference is in the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and the New Testament is a question not so easily answered. The distinction is often said to be that in the Old Testament the Holy Spirit is on the believer, but in the New…
1. Introduction You should think of 1917 at church on Sunday. Why? Let me explain. There's one film every Oscar season which everyone seems to have watched—your parents, your colleagues, even your pastor. This year, it's 1917— Sam Mendes' WW1 epic following two British Tommies on a seemingly impossible quest…
This piece was originally part of the Bowyer response to the Theopolis series surrounding Professor McDermott’s essay, “Rethinking Israel.” For the sake of brevity, it was removed from the initial response, to be published as a standalone piece. As we’ve argued previously , we are strongly supportive of the right…
Richard Bauckham’s groundbreaking work, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony , is profoundly insightful, but the message of the book is hampered by the presupposition of Marcan priority. Ironically the place where this assumption perhaps does its most damage is in Bauckham’s discussion of the apostle Matthew…
The Protestant Reformation was defined by certain clarifying disagreements between the medieval Church and those who came to be known as Protestant Reformers. Chief among these was the nature of justification: whether one was justified by works, or by faith and works, or—as Martin Luther contended—by faith alone. Now over…
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In his fascinating Rise of Christianity , Rodney Stark cites estimates that there were between 10,000 and 20,000 inhabitants of Jerusalem in the first century. Stark uses this to falsify Luke’s claims that there were 5000 Christians in Jerusalem (Acts 4:4) and “many thousands” of Jews (Acts 21:20): “Had there…
One Rhonda Wauhkonen discusses Nicholas of Lyra’s “Hebraic” semiotics and hermeneutics in a 1992 article on Chaucer. She begins by contrasting Augustine’s signum/res distinction to Lyra’s Hebraic viewpoint: “In the Hebrew system as evidenced in Scripture and as adapted by Nicholas, such stratification of signification did not exist, for the…
Nicholas of Lyra is known for his notion of a “double literal” sense to Scripture. For him, interpretation ad litteram includes both the historical and the doctrinal/christological senses, and he suggests that the ancient Hebrews could well have seen the Messianic sense as the literal sense. He also suggests that…
In Book 3 of Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais attributes an odd opinion to the 14th-century exegete, Nicholas of Lyra: “Pantagruel, having wholly subdued the land of Dipsody, transported thereunto a colony of Utopians, to the number of 9,876,543,210 men, besides the women and little children, artificers of all trades, and…
In Book 3 of Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais attributes an odd opinion to the 14th-century exegete, Nicholas of Lyra: “Pantagruel, having wholly subdued the land of Dipsody, transported thereunto a colony of Utopians, to the number of 9,876,543,210 men, besides the women and little children, artificers of all trades, and…
Steinmetz summarizes Thomas’s remarkably “NTWrightian” commentary on Matthew 20:1-16. While acknowledging an Origenist tradition that sees the hours as moments of an individual life, Thomas is more interested in the Irenaean tradition that interprets the parable in terms of redemptive history: “The hours mentioned in the parable are not stages…
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