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”…
Showing page 30 of 309
Showing page 5 of 43
A trolley careens out of control. If you push the fat man in front of the trolley, you can save the lives of five people, including two children, but the fat man will die. What do you do? The typical answers people give, oddly, depends on whether the question is…
I begin with two fundamental objections to R. Alan Streett’s Subversive Meals , a study of early Christian meal practices in the context of Greco-Roman banquets and the Roman empire. First, Streett takes the Roman banquet as the primary context for understanding Christian meal practices. I insist that Judaism and…
Jennings observes, as many have, that the New Testament says a great deal about God overcoming our enmity to Him ( Transforming Atonement , 127). He overstates his case, because the Bible, including the New Testament, also has much to say about the wrath of God. But his point stands,…
Reflecting on Paul’s Eucahristic teaching in 1 Corinthians 10-11, Theodore Jennings writes ( Transforming Atonement , 162): “To see the force of [Paul’s] argument, one need only ask in what ways the manner of assembling as communities of faith serves to demonstrate and exacerbate differences of wealth or prestige, of…
Scot McKnight ( A Community Called Atonement , 75-6) observes that the prophecy of Joel 2 that is fulfilled at Pentecost is a prophecy of political catastrophe. Pentecost, he concludes is both justification - “God’s act of justifying and making His judgment clear” by the gift of the Spirit that…
Scot McKnight ( A Community Called Atonement ) sums up the atonement as “identification for incorporation” (107). Jesus identifies with us even to death so that He may incorporate us “in his destruction of death and the devil,” and into the perichoretic fellowship of the Triune God. That formulation enables…
Showing page 608 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
