Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
Many years ago, while perusing Janice Anderson’s revised doctoral dissertation, Matthew’s Narrative Web: Over, and Over, and Over again , I was impressed by her attention to literary structures of repetition within and across Matthew’s Gospel. 1 Her research, in part, nudged me closer toward my present conviction that Matthew…
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
“Like a lily among the thorns, so is my love among the maidens… My beloved is mine and I am his; he pastures among the lilies.” Song 2:2, 16 In chapter two of the Song of Solomon, the Beloved compares his Love to a lily among thorns. The language of…
Introduction From the very beginning, angels and animals have played mediating roles between God and Man. Just as the World was made three-tiered (Heaven, Earth, Deep), so the creatures were made (Angels, Men, Animals). Before Christ came to build the permanent bridge across the chasm between God and Man, various…
Matthew 13, the third major discourse of the apostle’s gospel, is comprised almost entirely of parables. While it may seem that all the parables serve the same purpose in fulfilling the prophet Isaiah (Matthew 13:14), the parables found in verses 44–52, at the very least, function outside that purpose. This…
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Joseph Mangina ( Revelation , 248) summarizes David Barr's ( Tales of the End ) analysis of the parallels between Revelation 22 and the Didache 's depiction of early Christian Eucharist: “both Rev. 22 and the Didache (a) allude to Jesus's descent from David, (b) draw a sharp distinction between…
“‘Empire’ is a grand word,” write John Darwin at the beginning of his Unfinished Empire . On the ground, the reality of empire is “a mass of individuals, a network of lobbies, a mountain of hopes: for careers, fortunes, religious salvation or just physical safety. Empires were not made by…
Premillennialism - the view that Jesus returns to reign in person at the beginning of a literal one-thousand-year golden age - is often criticized these days for being defeatist, spiritualist, gnostic. It was not always so. As Martin Spence shows in his excellent Heaven on Earth , early critics of…
Four times in Revelation, John is directly told not to do something. When he falls at the feet of Jesus, Jesus touches him with his right hand and says, “Do not fear” (1:17; Gr. me phobou ). When no one in heaven, earth, or under earth can be found to…
Responding to Eugene McCarraher, John Milbank gives a brief overview of the complex interactions of European imperial powers, the church, and the colonized. Contrary to some popular opinion, “Missionaries were often opponents of military, economic and settler empire as has now been abundantly shown by historians. In a parallel fashion,…
When Dvorak's New World Symphony debuted in New York, it was hailed as a masterpiece, the American symphony that American composers had tried, and failed, to produce. Which American composers would those be? Douglas Shadle's Orchestrating the Nation answers the question. It's a question contemporary symphony-goers need answered too. As…
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