Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Part 1 We do not understand the role of women in ministry because we do not understand the role of men in ministry. We do not understand the role of men in ministry because we do not understand the church. We do not understand the church because the consumer culture…
1. One structure The Creation account (G1:1-2:4) conspicuously conveys meaning using the literary shape of the text. The narrative is told with formulaic patterns, repetitions, and parallelism. The Garden account is different. It is viewed as a separate text, with its own author, employing its own structure. This second account’s…
I was reading James Jordan’s Creation in Six Days while also preparing for Trinity Sunday in which the gospel reading is John 3:1-15. As providence would have it Jordan dropped an easter egg for me along the lines of baptism. In chapter 5 he points out, “ On the second…
It's true. There is no verse in the New Testament that commands or records an infant baptism. This poses a problem for some Christians. Those who only look for explicit commands, or those whose theology is limited to the New Testament, will conclude that infant baptism is not biblical and…
1. Goal This paper’s goal is to identify and describe a literary strategy employed by scripture, namely using two episodes that cover similar territory or themes using details drawn from opposite ends of a number of spectrums. Once described the reader may recognize numerous other instances of this strategy in…
Numbers 14 records the tragic story of Israel’s decision to rebel against Yahweh and Moses. Twelve spies had been sent into the land to bring back a report to Israel. All twelve spies agreed: “We went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey”…
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Evangelicals generally classify interpretations of Revelation as futurist, historicist, idealist, or preterist. For futurists, the book of Revelation describes the events leading up to the end of the space-time universe, the final coming of Jesus. Futurist interpretations need not be pre-millennial, but they often are. Historicist read Revelation as an…
Our head is the governing part of our body. We think in our brains, and our brains send signals through the nervous system to the rest of our bodies. It's no accident that “head” is an ancient and still current symbol of authority and rule: Head coach, Head of School,…
Commentators have used social scientific theories and models to try to explicate the social setting of biblical books and their authors. Bruce Malina has been a leading figure in applying these models to Revelation. We can get the general idea from his Social Science Commentary on Revelation , co-authored with…
Atonement theories abound. Christus Victor says Jesus triumphed over Satan; sacrificial theories say that Jesus offered Himself as a vicarious sacrifice; recently, a number of theologians have emphasized the corporate, ecclesial dimensions of the atonement. All true. We don't need to choose among them. Revelation 12:11 makes that plain: “They…
I previously commented on RJ Snell's The Perspective of Love , which offers “natural law in a new mode.” Snell was recently interviewed by Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio, and the interviewed revealed an important feature of Snell's natural law theory - its formalism. Snell emphasized that natural law…
At the center of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches about three duties of Jewish piety – alms, prayer, and fasting. Regarding the last, He says, “when you fast, do not put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites, for they render their faces unrecognizable in order to be…
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