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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Drawing on the work of Oliver O'Donovan, Jamie Smith offers a critique of natural law as an adequate grounding for political theology. Positively, Smith argues that “he public task of the church is not just to remind the world of what it (allegedly) already knows (by ‘natural' reason), but to…
At the beginning of his Silence and Praise , Ryan Hansen summarizes several of the recent approaches to understanding the cosmology of the book of Revelation. The most popular today borrows from the sociology of knowledge to suggest that John's writing creates a “symbolic universe” or “worldview” for his readers.…
The emphasis on chastity, virginity, and lack of defilement from women does not have to do with misogyny or asceticism. In biblical perspective, it means that this is both a liturgical and a military assembly. When Israel arrived at Sinai, the men had to keep themselves from women so as…
In his Gift and the Unity of Being , Antonio Lopez claims that “Christ's kenotic gift of self restores unity with God. The redemption of the gift allows man to see that unity with God is possible and that it generates a whole that is greater than its parts. St.…
Douglas Rushkoff's Nothing Sacred is rather all over the place (as one might say if one had a thickly superior British accent). The Judaism he favors isn't a “traditional community with concrete values and well-defined rules” (1) but one that “stresses transparency, open-ended inquiry, assimilation of the foreign, and a…
Explaining the power of liturgical habit, Paul Griffiths ( Decreation ) offers writing as an example of the self-forgetful, and world-forgetful, character of habit. It's one of the best descriptions of the experience of writing that I have come across. A few preliminaries to make sense of the analysis: Griffiths…
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