Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
It took a parody. I devoted a section of a chapter in Deep Exegesis to Peter Enns's work, I've critiqued him on my blog here and here and here , as well as the similar work of John Walton, here and here . To my knowledge, neither Enns nor Walton…
The establishment of same-sex marriage is not a bolt from the blue, but the logical outworking of a series of related developments in America’s practice and understanding of marriage. Same-sex marriage was unthinkable just a few decades ago. What made it thinkable wasn’t a concerted campaign on the part of…
Unless Obergefell can be reversed soon through the next two presidential elections and the retirement/replacement of renegade SCOTUS judges (Ginsburg, Kennedy, and Breyer are the first up), this will turn out to be the greatest American tragedy for the civil liberties of persons of faith, for the cause of sexual…
With same sex marriage now legalized in many Western countries, and militant Islam ravaging the East, Christians might be wondering what God is doing. With the repeated failure of predictions of an imminent second coming, is the Bible any help to us at all in predicting what will happen next?…
When I was expecting my first child, an older woman gave me the best nugget of parenting wisdom that I have. She told me to always remember that my child is my sister-in-Christ before she is my daughter. I have clung to these words in so many situations as I…
Male-female distinctions define marriage in a particular direction: the gift of generation and of generations. With its decision, the Supreme Court of the United States has done its part to deny and destroy this reality, and further the modern process of legalizing child abandonment, while at the same time violating…
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Isaiah’s promise that strangers and foreigners will tend flocks, farm, and maintain vineyards for Israel (61:5) makes it sound like the nations will do the menial work while Israel lives in cultured leisure. I suspect something else is in view. Flocks, grain, and wine are liturgical materials in the Hebrew…
The anointed Servant proclaims Jubilee - liberty to captives (Isaiah 61:1; cf. Leviticus 25:20). Jubilee gives not only freedom from debt-slavery but a return to ancestral property. Liberty takes physical form in possession of land. So Isaiah is still talking about Jubilee when he promises “double” in the land (v.…
Isaiah 61 closes with a brief song, apparently sung by the anointed Servant of verse 1. He is dressed up as a glorified Adam in a new garden that teems with righteousness and praise. The servant is vested and robed, an appropriate sequel to the anointing. That is enough to…
In his contribution to Sacrifice in Religious Experience , Tsvi Abusch observes that the center of Mesopotamian cult was not the killing or burning of an animal, nor the festive meal that often followed sacrifice. The central event was feeding the god: “Food was placed before the god and consumed…
The war in heaven (Revelation 12:7-12) looks like an even contest. On the one side stand Michael and his angels and on the other the dragon and his angels (v. 7). But the text is organized to show that the two sides are not as symmetrical as they initially seem:…
There is war in heaven (Revelation 12), and Michael casts the dragon from heaven to earth. Good thing for heaven; not so good for earth, because the dragon comes down enraged and begins to attack the mother and her children. But the dragon is eventually cast out of earth too,…
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