Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). The famous definition of faith with which the eleventh chapter of Hebrews opens has received a number of different interpretations. The crux of the problem is the interpretation of the words translated in…
This essay is an exploration of one element of the final of the four Gospels, the Gospel of John. My thesis is that the Gospel of John answers the issue of "friendship" being a homoerotic category. It challenges the "Greek Way of Love and Friendship" 1 It is indeed the…
"And I also way to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it" (Matthew 16:18). Matthew 16:13ff. has historically been one of the most oft-cited passages of Scripture. Throughout the Middle Ages, it was used…
Matthew 8-9 records three clusters of miracles, interspersed with snatches of Jesus’ teaching about various aspects of discipleship. Just as the Sermon on the Mount displays the authority of Jesus’ Word in teaching, these chapters display the authority of Jesus’ Word over sickness, uncleanness, the creation, demons, and death. In…
The association of women and wells in the Scriptures has long been noted by theologians, a symbolism closely connected to marriage which begins in Genesis and climaxes in Revelation. There is a lesson drawn in the water of wells that I’d like to explore, but before that I must trace…
Of course, since the Israelites had agriculture, Solomon was not paleolithic as that term is used today. But "paleo" is simply a prefix meaning old or previous , the opposite of "neo." In that sense, I wonder if we might understand Solomon better if we interpret his statements and riddles…
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One should not be surprised, given Peter Leithart’s track record, that something as imaginative as the Trinity Institute for Biblical, Liturgical , and Cultural Studies is to be formed in Birmingham, AL. But it is nonetheless an extraordinary event that should be celebrated not only among the Reformed, but all…
Bonhoeffer ( Ethics ) condemns both radicalism and compromise. Radicalism sees only the ultimate and dismisses and judges the penultimate; “everything penultimate is enmity towards Christ” (p. 127). Compromise ensures that the penultimate retains its rights and is not threatened by the ultimate, but in so doing limits the claims…
Bonhoeffer ( Ethics ) has a superb passage about the “deputy” rather than the isolated individual as the unit of ethical reflection. Everyone, he argues, is a deputy: “The fact that responsibility is fundamentally a matter of deputyship is demonstrated most clearly in those circumstances in which a man is…
A brief in favor of theology as Queen of the sciences at www.firstthings.com this morning.
When I first came to Japan in 1981, I was a premillennial dispensationalist struggling to plant a church in a pagan culture. Jordan’s The Law of the Covenant , which I read in 1984, showed me how the Bible could and must be read to apply to cultural issues today.…
In Ethics , Bonhoeffer discusses the relation of the “ultimate” to the “penultimate,” God to the world, grace to nature. He admits that being man and being good are “penultimate in relation to the justification of the sinner by grace.” But this doesn’t mean that the penultimate conditions or determines…
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