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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The announcement of Obama’s Peace Prize was greeted with gasps, but on reflection it makes sense.  Obama is, after all, our first Scandinavian President.
Turner corrects a widespread misunderstanding of the Pseudo-Dionysian view of religious language.  For the pseudo-Denys (Turner’s designation), everything comes from God and thus “every creature retains within it a trace of its divine source, every creature in some way reflects, or is in some way an image or ‘similitude’ of,…
Denys Turner ( Eros and Allegory: Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs (Cistercian Studies Series) ) has the best summary I’ve read of the problems the doctrine of creation poses for any form of Platonism. First, Platonism has difficulty explaining how anything can exist other than God: “For the…
The folks at First Things published an article of mine on secularization in their “On the Square” space yesterday, September 30.
Mike Bull is an graphic designer in the wonderfully named Katoomba, New South Wales, who writes about the Bible. He’s produced a massive “biblical theology of the whole Christ” entitled Totus Christus .  There are a lot of juicy details here, but the overall scheme is to follow the heptamerous…
In a 1996 article, Angel Manuel Rodriguez offers a close structural analysis of the day of coverings rite in Leviticus 16. Overall, he finds that the chapter is a chiasm: “Yahweh said to Moses” ——- “And Yahweh said to Moses” |A Aaron should not go into most holy place any time…
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