Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The preceding essay has caused me to consider the possibility that the life of Abraham as recounted in Genesis contains a typological prophecy of the history of Israel; that is, that the events in Abraham’s life broadly anticipate events in Israel’s history. This kind of pattern is seen in the…
by: Jeff Meyers and James Jordan In the fifth chapter of John’s gospel we read of a man who had been ill for 38 years and who was lying by a pool located by the Sheep Gate of Jerusalem. This sheep waited, as did many other infirm people, for an…
What had been reduced to ruin by this sex, would by the selfsame sex be recovered to salvation. As Eve believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel. The delinquency which the one occasioned by believing, the other by believing effaced. —Tertullian What is Paul saying about women and salvation…
Back in Biblical Horizons 132 I discussed the horrible abuse of the converted men of Salem/Shechem in Genesis 34. These Hivites had joined the covenant by circumcision and then were slaughtered by Simeon and Levi. That, however, is not the end of their story. In Joshua 9 we find the…
Genesis 14:14 says that Abram mustered his trained men, “born in his house,” to rescue Lot, and gives their number as 318. It is clear that the precise number is provided for some reason, but what is it? S. Gevirtz notes that 318 is the sum of all the prime…
Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. (John 21:11) This is one of those texts in the Bible that many people puzzle over. It is not a puzzle…
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According to Norman Kemp Smith ( Problems in the Cartesian Philosophy ), “The great achievement of Galileo and Descartes in physical science consisted in a new theory of motion. Whereas by the Greek Atomists and by Aristotle motion was anthropomorphically conceived, as, like human activity, coming into being, exhausting itself…
Richard II is often cited as Shakespeare's prime example of a divine-right king, a king by ceremony, the paragon of sacramental kingship. His play depicts the unraveling of medieval kingship and the formation of a new basis for politics. As Alexander Leggatt ( Shakespeare's Political Drama ) argues, however, the…
MD Goulder argues that death and resurrection is the narrative pattern of Acts ( Type and History in Acts ). In most cases, there is no actual death. There is near-death, and then deliverance: “The apostolic college, Peter, Paul, in turn go down to the pit: and from the pit…
Paul Cantor ( Shakespeare's Rome ) argues that Shakespeare wrote Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra as companion plays, marking the birth of the Republic and its decadent decline in the early empire. As evidence, he points to overlapping themes and literary features, and notes that there is a political and…
Descartes's early critics had many qualms about his new philosophy, but for theological critics the central question was how to square his views with the dogma of transubstantiation. Descartes claimed to be a faithful Roman Catholic, but philosophically he was opposed to the hylomorphic theory of matter on which traditional…
MD Goulder ( Type and History in Acts ) points out that the history recorded in Acts doesn't follow the Jerusalem-Judea-Samaria-ends of earth pattern that Jesus leads us to expect at the beginning of the book: “The four places are being given in their theological order: the holy city, the…
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