Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). The famous definition of faith with which the eleventh chapter of Hebrews opens has received a number of different interpretations. The crux of the problem is the interpretation of the words translated in…
This essay is an exploration of one element of the final of the four Gospels, the Gospel of John. My thesis is that the Gospel of John answers the issue of "friendship" being a homoerotic category. It challenges the "Greek Way of Love and Friendship" 1 It is indeed the…
"And I also way to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it" (Matthew 16:18). Matthew 16:13ff. has historically been one of the most oft-cited passages of Scripture. Throughout the Middle Ages, it was used…
Matthew 8-9 records three clusters of miracles, interspersed with snatches of Jesus’ teaching about various aspects of discipleship. Just as the Sermon on the Mount displays the authority of Jesus’ Word in teaching, these chapters display the authority of Jesus’ Word over sickness, uncleanness, the creation, demons, and death. In…
The association of women and wells in the Scriptures has long been noted by theologians, a symbolism closely connected to marriage which begins in Genesis and climaxes in Revelation. There is a lesson drawn in the water of wells that I’d like to explore, but before that I must trace…
Of course, since the Israelites had agriculture, Solomon was not paleolithic as that term is used today. But "paleo" is simply a prefix meaning old or previous , the opposite of "neo." In that sense, I wonder if we might understand Solomon better if we interpret his statements and riddles…
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After summing up Ong’s work on Ramus, Johannes Fabian ( Time and the Other ) suggests an analogy between Ramist pedagogy and anthropology: “Having learned more about the connections between printing and diagrammatic reduction of the contents of thought, one is tempted to consider the possibility that anthropological kinship theories…
The Pharisaical practice of washing before meals is legally odd (as pointed out by Roger Booth, Jesus and the Laws of Purity ). The one explicit reference to the need for laymen to wash hands is Leviticus 15:11 doesn’t have to do with food or with victims of uncleanness. Leviticus…
Ernst Lohmeyer ( Lord of the Temple ) argues that Jesus’ saying on defilement in Mark 7 (=Matthew 15) “transfers the whole question of purity from the plant of material externals to that of man’s inner self . . . . there emerges in unmistakable superiority the inner world of…
Matthew 14:22-16:12 is arranged in a chiastic pattern, repeatedly focusing on food but centering on Jesus’ healing ministry: A. Crossing the sea, 14:22-36 B. Pharisees and scribes question Jesus about washing before meals, 15:1-20 C. Jesus gives crumbs to the Canaanite woman, 15:21-29 D. Jesus heals the multitudes, 15:29-31 C’.…
On clear nights, I can see the Milky Way stretching across the sky from my drive way. Since the mid-nineteenth century, fewer and fewer have easy sight of the night sky. In Hong Kong, the buildings stretch and loom so high that the streets below are a cavernous indoor mall,…
Jay notes that the mid-19th century witnessed shift in the setting of “oracularcentric spectacle” from the “aristocratic court” to the “bourgeois equivalent in the massive sheet glass windows [of department stories] displaying a wealth of commodities to be coveted, and, if money allowed, consumed. Here the dandies’ quest to distinguish…
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