Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
While controversies over the writings of Paul continue in various corners of the intellectual globe, the word of God given through Paul and his scribe and all of the church’s interpreters and translators over the last two millennia is still readily available to the lofty and the lowly. Paul, as…
The second in a series of studies in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 22:30: A man shall not take his father’s wife, and shall not uncover his father’s wing (Hebrew: kanaf ). There are a number of unusual features in this law that mark it out from the previous context, indicating that it…
The texts of Christianity have been slowly at work, under the power of the Holy Spirit for 2000 years now. If we could be magically transported back into the world of two millennia ago, modern Americans would be shocked at the cruelty of that world. There was no concern for…
The Story of the Gadarene Madman is told in all three synoptic Gospels (Matthew 8:28-34, Mark 5:1-20, Luke 8:26-37). Jesus ventures into a Gentile area when He passes over the Sea of Galilee. Upon disembarking from his boat, he is immediately met by a demon-possessed madman. Upon meeting Jesus, he…
Part 1 of a multi-part series of studies on Deuteronomy 22:30-23:8. Eric Auerbach, in his classic work on Western literature, devotes his first chapter to contrasting Homer with the Bible. Of Homer, he writes of the “need of Homeric style to leave nothing which it mentions half in darkness and…
Trinity House Fellow James B. Jordan will be a speaker at an International Conference on Biblical Symbolism that will be held in Seoul on Monday, May 27 in 2013. He will address "The Importance of Biblical Symbolism and Symbolic Interpretation of the Bible." The conference will have three other speakers…
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Advent is the season of coming, since we commemorate the coming of God’s Son in flesh. Advent is just as much a season of giving, since we glorify the God who so loved that He gave. Distorted as it can become, Christmas giving is a profoundly right way to celebrate…
Trinitarian musings arising from some private discussions with a group of friends. (Note: this is a revised version of my original post). According to classic Trinitarian theology, will is an linked to nature and, since there is a single divine nature, there is also a single divine will. That’s true;…
Paul’s announcement of the reign of grace seems innocuously theological. But there was already supposed to be an age of grace operating in the first century, inaugurated by the divine benefactor, Augustus Caesar. James Harrison ( Paul’s Language of Grace in Its Graeco-Roman Context (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament 2,…
In a 1999 article in Neotestmentica , Stephan Joubert observes that Paul teaches that God’s grace enables the Corinthians to experience autarkeia , “self-sufficiency” (2 Corinthians 9:8). The word is a common one in Stoic ethics, describing the placid contentment of the sage regardless of the external circumstances. Joubert thinks…
In his classic study of The Search for the Perfect Language (The Making of Europe) , Umberto Eco summarizes Dante’s proto-Chomskyan argument about the effects of Babel on the forma locutionis , the innate grammar with which Adam was created. Eco says, “It seems most likely that Dante believed that,…
Every year, one of my students presents on a section of Calvin’s Antidote to the Council of Trent , and I’m impressed again with how Calvin responds to Trent’s claims about baptism. The first decree of the fifth session includes this statement: “Whosoever asserts that this sin of Adam, which…
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