Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Paradosis Center at John Brown University in Siloam Spring, Arkansas, put on its first conference last week, it was a remarkable event. It was an ecumenical conference including Orthodox (John Behr, Edith Humphrey, others), Catholic (Rusty Reno, Michael Root, others), and Evangelical (Timothy George, David Lyle Jeffrey). Unusually for…
Naphtali Meshel observes in his new The "Grammar" of Sacrifice that scholars have been talking for decades about the "grammatical" character of ritual and sacrifice in general, but have never actually analyzed a specific ritual or sacrificial system grammatically. Some even talk about a "universal grammar" of sacrifice "even though…
Some Christians are rather breezy about the problem of evil. We shouldn't be. Do I need to remind you of the grisly beheadings that have taken place over the past few weeks? Do I need to remind you of the blood of innocents that’s been spilled in our own country?…
Have you ever been to a wedding where the heavens opened and a voice declared the couple “husband and wife”? Few of us have. Beautiful as they are, most marriages are quite mundane. Yet when Jesus talks about marriage, He describes it as something that God does: “What God has…
Jesus is the last and greatest of the Prophets. He is the Prophet that Moses predicted (Deuteronomy 18). That means He gives the final word, brings the blueprints for the final temple, speaks the final world into existence, and has complete and permanent access to the divine court, where He…
Paul stands against those who are “troubling” or “disturbing” the Galatians churches ( tarasso ; 1:7; also in 5:10). The reference seems to be two great troublers from the Old Testament. First, Achan is described as a “troubler” for the problems he causes in the aftermath of the battle at…
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The New Testament contains a number of warnings about false prophets ( pseudoprophetes ), often in “apocalyptic” contexts (Matthew 24:11, 24; Mark 13:22; 2 Peter 2:1; 1 John 4:1). The link between false prophecy and crisis goes back to Jeremiah. As the Babylonian threat against Judah rises, false prophets appear,…
“Touch not my anointed, and do my prophets no harm.” That is how Psalm 105:15 summarizes the Lord's care of the patriarchs who were wanderers and strangers in the earth. “He permitted no many to oppress them, and he reproved kings for their sake” (v. 14, alluding to Genesis 12…
Psalm 105:36 describes the exodus as the Lord's striking of the “firstborn” of Egypt, “the firstfuits of all their vigor.” Firstborn is firstfruits: It makes obvious sense. And behind the obvious is a link between human and humus , between the fruitfulness of earth and the fruitfulness of the human…
Revelation 12-13 describe draconian and bestial attacks on the saints. The enemies form a triad. Indeed, they form a double triad. First, dragon, sea beast, land beast. Then: Sea beast, land beast, image of the beast. Alternatively, we can see four: Dragon, sea beast, land beast, image of the beast.…
In his contribution to Radical Secularization , John Milbank contests Habermas's Kantian notion of public reason, arguing that reason is not “self-grounded” but “inseparable from our affective and elective intuitions concerning the nature of reality. Reason is always conjoined with feeling and can even be considered to be a reflexive…
Jeffery Leonard ends a Review of Biblical Literature (4/15) review of BC Hodge's Revisiting the Days of Genesis with this observation: “While the author does a workmanlike job of demonstrating how various numbers in Gen 1–11 could be interpreted symbolically, it is not at all clear to me that the…
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