Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Mark Horne has done a good job elucidating how martyrdom paves the way for revival and success of Christ’s kingdom in the world, just as it also can bring more hardship and suffering. The diverging wheat and tares both growing up together, both benefitting from the watering of blood on…
For Part 1, click HERE . Anyone who has read James B. Jordan’s Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World and appreciated it as a revelation of how God communicates in symbols and types—both in His Word and in the created order—understands what it is like to…
Abel was the first martyr in history. There is no evading this. Jesus pairs him with a murdered prophet (Matthew 23:35; 2 Chronicles 24:20-22). Abel’s blood was heard by God (Genesis 4:10), and God responded to the cry by driving out Cain, Abel’s killer, from the eastern borderland near Eden…
Adapted from The Shape of Isaiah: A Covenant-Literary Analysis The prophetic texts are the most difficult parts of the Bible to understand. And when it comes to baffling the reader, they are no respecter of persons, perplexing with their Delphic wiles even the studied scholars. It has been said that…
The subtitle for the 2004 film Dodgeball is “A True Underdog Story.” If the viewer lets the words pass by without a double-take, he or she will likely spend the rest of the movie, which applies the “unlikely teammates make the best teams” trope to the “sport” of dodgeball, asking,…
The book of Ezra gives an almost odd amount of attention to vessels. These holy vessels, whether cups, bowls, or flagons, are either dedicated as tribute or were used in temple service. The two Hebrew words translated as ‘vessel’ in most English translations are used a total of 14 times.…
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Uche Anizor writes to thank me for my review of his recent Kings and Priests , and to correct some misstatements. First, I complained in my review that he didn’t give attention to the role of the pastor as lead priest-king-reader in a community of readers. In fact., he does.…
In February 2013, I predicted that the GOP would buckle on gay marriage. It was an easy, unoriginal prediction, and the evidence continues to pile up. Chris Geidner reports at BuzzFeed : “Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — one of the Republicans often discussed as a potential 2016 presidential nominee —…
Sam Wells ends his appreciative Christian Century review of Rowan Williams’s Faith in the Public Square with this incisive comment: “The task is not simply to expose the inadequacy of a world without God or to show the collaborative spirit of religious engagement in the common good. It surely must…
Christopher Beeley’s Leading God’s People is a pastoral guide drawn whose wisdom is drawn from the great pastoral theologians of the early church. In an opening chapter on leadership in the church, Beeley observes that early pastors complained about being pulled here and there from their primary tasks - “preaching,…
In a comment on the description of Cyrus as a “shepherd” in Isaiah 44:24-45-7, John Goldingay ( The Theology of the Book of Isaiah , 66-7) observes that “in Old Testament times, ‘shepherd’ was a recognizable way to describe the role of a king. A shepherd is in charge of…
In her study of Eucharist and the Poetic Imagination in Early Modern England , Sophie Read observes that since Donne never wrote directly on the sacramental debates of the Reformation era, his view has to be “reconstructed . . . from its rhetorical trace” (86). Puns provide one source. A…
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