Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
Many years ago, while perusing Janice Anderson’s revised doctoral dissertation, Matthew’s Narrative Web: Over, and Over, and Over again , I was impressed by her attention to literary structures of repetition within and across Matthew’s Gospel. 1 Her research, in part, nudged me closer toward my present conviction that Matthew…
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
“Like a lily among the thorns, so is my love among the maidens… My beloved is mine and I am his; he pastures among the lilies.” Song 2:2, 16 In chapter two of the Song of Solomon, the Beloved compares his Love to a lily among thorns. The language of…
Introduction From the very beginning, angels and animals have played mediating roles between God and Man. Just as the World was made three-tiered (Heaven, Earth, Deep), so the creatures were made (Angels, Men, Animals). Before Christ came to build the permanent bridge across the chasm between God and Man, various…
Matthew 13, the third major discourse of the apostle’s gospel, is comprised almost entirely of parables. While it may seem that all the parables serve the same purpose in fulfilling the prophet Isaiah (Matthew 13:14), the parables found in verses 44–52, at the very least, function outside that purpose. This…
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PROVERBS 28:4 Law ( torah ) is mentioned about a dozen times in Proverbs.  Most of the uses refer to the torah of a mother (1:8) or a father (3:1), and in these uses the emphasis is on the fact that torah is “instruction” rather than strictly “law” in our…
Discussing Barth’s distinction of the “church of Esau” and the “church of Jacob” in the Romerbrief , Michael Horton ( People and Place: A Covenant Ecclesiology ) gets Barth’s weaknesses exactly right.  First, “Barth seems to assume that ‘secularity’ is neutral, objective, descriptive science” and second “Barth can only place…
Kinneging points out the ambiguous relationship that traditional conservatism has often had with the market: “No conservative will deny that a system of mutual provision of services, based on a range of evil affects residing within man - which are further inflamed by the unrestricted operation of that system -…
In The Geography of Good and Evil: Philosophical Investigations (Crosscurrents) , Dutch philosopher Andreas Kinneging argues that the conservative objection to the Enlightenment is not only intellectual but has to do with the will: “It is the view of conation that characterizes conservatism more than anything else.”  That view is…
The eternal Word, being proper to the Father’s being, cannot advance.  Yet, Scripture says that Jesus advances in wisdom and stature.  Athanasius appeals to the incarnation: He is advancing humanly.  But, as always, what the Word does in the flesh is done for us: “Neither then was the advance the Word’s,…
Peter describes women as “weaker vessels” (1 Pet 3:7).  That sounds like an insult.  Is it? First, vessels in Scripture are almost always temple vessels, implements of temple worship.  Hebrew 9:21 is one of the NT passages that uses the word in this specific sense.  Other uses in the NT…
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