Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A couple years ago, I read Paul Graham’s ruminations on higher- and lower-level languages in Hackers and Painters . Although he’s talking about computer languages, his insights have bearing on biblical language and hermeneutics. So bear with me while I lay out some of the basic points, and then we’ll…
Toward the end of the Revelation, John sees a vision of a new heaven and a new earth. The old created order in Adam has passed away, and the new order under the lordship of Jesus has been established. Within this new creation John also sees “the holy city, the…
I have been talking with you about integration—an elusive, allusive, word, pregnant with something we long for. I have suggested that what might be rightly a natural longing has been exacerbated by our own modern Western milieu’s dominating devotion to bits and bytes, a prevailing sense of fragmentation. Fragmentation is…
Sunday morning found me kneeling at the foot of my bed, trembling, pebbles of sweat leaping off the edge of my brow and nose, and hitting the floor in front of me, but not from piety was I procumbent; though as a minister for over a decade, I had made…
In April of this year, President Trump issued a zero-tolerance border policy that separated families, specifically children from their parents who had crossed the USA/Mexico border be it illegally or as asylum seekers . In mid-June, Trump dropped this policy of splitting up families, however there are still children who…
During the Middle Ages, Joseph, the husband of Mary, was the butt of many jokes. Medieval theater and art often depicted him as something of a buffoon, decidedly marginal to the gospel story. In part, this was the unfortunate obverse of the exaltation of Mary; any man would suffer by…
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During the staging of his play before the king, Hamlet mutters the word “Wormwood.” Why? Irwin Matus suggests the following: “Rarely glossed in editions of the play, wormwood is accepted as meaning only something bitter, from the taste of the plant of that name. However, the plant was also used…
Shakespeare’s two tetrologies on English history trace the shift from a sacrally based political order (Richard II) to a “Machiavellian” one (Richard III). That is the sequence of actual history. But the sequence of Shakespeare’s composition is different. Shakespeare wrote the historically later tetrology (2 Parts of Henry VI and…
Markus Barth highlights the judicial cast of Paul’s statement in Ephesians 2:7 that we “show the surpassing riches of His grace.” The verb “show” or “prove” is a lawcourt term, pointing to the presentation of evidence or a judicial demonstration. God has raised us up in Jesus to the heavenly…
Ephesians 2:14: He Himself is our peace. Jesus is the one who brings peace between God and man. He has reconciled us to God, and brought near those who have been far off. But in our sermon text Paul is chiefly concerned with the peace that Jesus has brought between…
According to Paul, the church is being built into a holy dwelling, a temple in which the Spirit dwells. This has many implications, but let me highlight one. According to the Old Testament, temples were holy places whose holiness had to be guarded and defended. Levites guarded the tabernacle and…
From Francis Bacon’s De Augmentis Scientiarum , 7.1: “For as the fable goes of the basilisk, that if he sees you first, you die for it, but if you see him first, he dies; so itis with deceits, impostures, and evil arts, which, if they be first espied, they lose…
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