Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Christians get sex wrong when we start from the wrong end. We start from human desires, passions, biological drives and “needs.” These are treated as givens, as the base-line natural reality of human sexuality. Then we come to the Bible and find, to our surprise, that God places all kinds…
Why isn't Proverbs better known as the Bible's book on "manliness"? I use quotation marks because the term almost seems archaic in our present culture, along with "manhood." Perhaps the Church is too embarrassed to admit the Bible addresses that much attention to the topic. But another reason can be…
In certain evangelical Christian churches it is the tradition to exalt preaching above the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Ever since the rise of Revivalist preachers pushing for conversions, the practice has cast doubt upon the possibility of Baptism or the Lord’s Supper being a “means of grace”…
Perhaps one of the most stimulating sections of Yoram Hazony’s The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture addresses the question of how we are to discern the meaning of biblical narratives, especially how biblical narratives might present arguments of a more general nature. Hazony quotes John Barton’s remarks about the difficulty of…
In this slender volume, Joseph Minich (Ph.D. student at the University of Dallas) attempts to answer some of the deepest questions of human existence. With his honesty, his probing questioning, his wide reading, and his ability to plunge beneath superficial answers, he provides a helpful source of reflection for fellow…
A Closer Look at Noah’s Post-Flood Humiliation In Genesis 9:20-27 My wife is currently leading a Bible study through Genesis for a group of insatiable Bible students. Because she is a deep thinker and has a high view of inspiration, there is no passage she is unwilling to face head…
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David Virtue has a long, long list of non-participants at Lambeth, many representing the most vibrant portions of the Anglican communion. He estimates that 450-500 Anglican bishops are missing.
Freundlieb offers several criticisms of Saussure’s notion that language is purely differential. First, “If the meaning of a term could not be specified positively but only in relation to (all the?) other terms in the lexicon, no one could ever learn the vocabulary of a language, except in one stroke…
In an article in Poetics Today , Dieter Freundlieb notes that “Saussure argues that ‘in language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that…
At least Thiselton gets James Barr right. Asked about the meaning of ekklesia in the New Testament, “we might say (a) ‘the Church is the Body of Christ’ (b) ‘the Church is the first installment of the Kingdom of God’ (c) ‘the Church is the Bride of Christ, and other…
Much biblical interpretation today is minimalist. Deliberately so. Anthony Thiselton approvingly quotes this from Eugene Nida: “The correct meaning of any term is that which contributes least to the total context.” Thiselton expounds: “we might define the semantic values of ‘green’ in several ways: as a colour, as meaning inexperienced,…
Context determines the meaning of a word, right? But “context” refers, in the first instance, to other words. But their meaning must also be determined by context? When you take all the words away, what’s left of the “context” that’s supposed to determine the word’s meaning? Mustn’t individual words and…
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