Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
When Jesus says in the farewell discourse that his disciples know the way to where He is going, Thomas replies: “We do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus answers Thomas, but He gives Thomas more than he asked : “I am the way,…
Through the pandemic we learned a lot about infections, how to catch them, what’s contagious, how to protect yourself from getting the infection. I learned a lot of new terms, like “social distancing,” “ppe” (personal protective equipment), N95 masks, and so on. We’ve seen that people are willing to go…
In Genesis 9:20, Noah is called “a man of the soil”. This phrase is a bit of a shock in the Hebrew; though it’s made up of two very common words - 'ish is “man” and 'adamah is “soil” or “ground” - these two words are never used together before…
Harold Bloom’s discussion of Twelfth Night in his Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human is, as would be expected, insightful. It displays his deep love of poetry, and includes some truly eloquent descriptions of Orsino: “that sublimely outrageous lover of love” and “amiable erotic lunacy.” Bloom is worth reading just…
There have been times when Evangelicals, in an attempt to be clear about the errors of Rome and Constantinople concerning Mary, have been so denigrating of the mother of our Lord that they sounded more like cut and pasted lines from the Babylonian Talmud than they did disciples of Mary’s…
Awe is the phenomena experienced when one looks up and lights upon the height, majesty, and mystery of the California Redwoods. It appears the trees pierce heaven itself. Among these giant organisms are the Sequoia–while they are shorter in form, they reserve a width that spans an automobile. These trees…
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Barth ( CD 4.1) attacks the notion that the incarnation is a “contradiction” or “paradox” or “rift” in God on two bases. First, he argues that there cannot be any contradiction in God; God is a God peace, not of confusion. Second, he argues that we only draw this conclusion…
Michael Root raised some pointed questions about Milbank’s views on gift. The most cogent criticism was about Milbank’s view of the atonement, in which he argued that there is no “Godward” move in the atonement for Milbank. Milbank explicitly rejects sacrificial notions of atonement, and by Root’s assessment ends up…
Sylvia Keesmaat’s paper was uneven, beginning with some suggestive observations on Philippians 2 and then descending into self-contradiction. First, the good stuff: She suggested that the Christic “hymn” in Philippians 2 is not merely contrasting Jesus and Adam, but Jesus and the emperor. Jesus attains to imperial status, but does…
Richard Hays presented an SBL paper disputing with Frances Watson’s view that the gospel preached by Paul cannot be narrated. According to Hays, Watson’s main concern is that the story of the gospel will be immanentized and become a story of human self-salvation instead of a story of God’s salvation…
God in Flesh, John 1:1-18 INTRODUCTION Many Christians puzzle over the incarnation, the fact that the Son of God took on human flesh. But most of the difficulties come from trying to think about the incarnation using categories from outside the Bible. We think about the incarnation as if the…
One would not think Rosemary Reuther would have much in common with the John Birch Society. During an SBL seminar, though, she said “One of the first things we have to recognize is that we have been taken over.” I’m going to send the JBS her address, since she seems…
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