Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
21. Under three things the earth quakes. And under four, it cannot bear up. 22. Under a slave when he becomes king, And a fool when he is satisfied with food, 23. Under an odious woman when she gets a husband, And a maidservant when she supplants her mistress. The…
We have looked at the prima facie evidence for a short chronology in Ezra-Nehemiah, a chronology that assumes that the Artaxerxes of Ezra 7ff. and Nehemiah is in fact Darius. This month we examine the argument against the short chronology. There is only one argument, and that is that the…
The Priestly Genealogy Jeshua the high priest, who returned with Zerubbabel, was not a young man at the time. We know this because his father, Jehozadak, was taken into captivity (1 Chron. 6:15). Thus was 50 years before the decree of Cyrus (2 Kings 25:18-22, by implication). Jehozadak’s father Seraiah,…
Thomas C. Oden, After Modernity . . . What? Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990. Reviewed by Rev. Jeffrey Meyers. Reading Oden’s After Modernity . . . What? was tonic. There were passages that launched me out of my chair with a hoot to pace the office floor — of course, the…
Matthew records that Jesus "withdrew" to Galilee to begin His public ministry there after He "heard that John had been delivered up" (Mt. 4:12). Matthew’s typically matter-of-fact style veils the truly remarkable character of Jesus’ withdrawal. Matthew has been presenting Jesus as the Messiah, the Seed of Abraham and Son…
John Brown called this one of the most difficult passages in the entire epistle to the Hebrews, and Hebrews is no easy book. Several questions confront us as we read and meditate on these verses. First, in what sense did the Old Testament saints described in verses 4-38 not receive…
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A few reflections on Barth’s discussion of the Trinity in CD 1.1, ch 10. Thanks to Joshua Appel, Josh Davis, and especially Toby Sumpter who clarified several of these points. 1) Barth insists that Trinitarian theology developed not as a qualification of monotheism but as a way of defending monotheism:…
Christians are committed to the notion that the margins may be the center: We believe that a stable in Bethlehem-Judah is the site where a new humanity is born; that catacombs serve as incubator for a renewed empire; that German barbarians are the wave of future civilization; that Africans might…
(This is the weakest part.) Postmodern historiography has rightly protested against this kind of bigotry. But in the process, postmoderns have apparently jettisoned the entire idea of a universal history, if not the idea of history itself. For postmoderns, to reduce humanity to a single unit is not only intellectually…
This is much weaker, but I think the argument is still clear enough. Of course, in central respects, this proposal calls for a revival of a project that dominated Christian historical writing from Eusebius to the Enlightenment. For Christian theologians and historians, all of human history was enclosed in a…
This is the first draft ( sans footnotes) of a paper I will deliver in January. The remainder of this draft will be posted on this site. To this day, schoolchildren in Sri Lanka learn about Buddhist ?doctrine?Efrom a Buddhist Catechism first published in English and Sinhalese in 1881. Described…
One premise of the above analysis is that Islam, which conquered some of the most vibrant areas of early Christianity, was and is a judgment of God, and therefore that Christians must recognize that Islam?s rise and continuing success results from the failures of the church. Laurence E. Browne concluded…
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