Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For many people Christmas comes on December 25 and is over December 26. The tree is taken down along with the lights and the other decorations, and everyone begins setting the house in order for the new year. No more Christmas hymns. No more celebrations (well, until New Year’s Eve).…
The Ascension and the Incarnation should not be disconnected in our Christmas thinking or celebrations. As N.T. Wright notes, the ascension is "a central and vital feature without which all sorts of other things start to go demonstrably wrong. . . . where the ascension has been ignored or misunderstood,…
“In the Word was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness.” Thus John describes the incarnation of the Son. He comes as the living and life-giving light of the world. That’s good news. In the beginning, God spoke and light shone…
Christmas is all about Jesus. The angels announce Jesus’ birth, shepherds and wise men come to see Jesus, Herod wants to kill Jesus. We occasionally think of the Father who sent the Son, but we keep returning to the Son made flesh in Bethlehem’s manger. Meanwhile, as always, the Spirit…
Christmas is about many things, but one of the chief things revealed in the gospel of Christmas is the humility of God. We don't often think of humility as an attribute of God. If God is glorious and exalted, we think, He must be haughty and proud and self-centered. We…
John famously begins his Gospel with a piece of theology: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Matthew starts with a genealogy. John celebrates Advent with a hymn, Matthew with a list. For John, Jesus is the Word of creation…
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Carey Ellen Walsh ( Exquisite Desire ) points to the difference between classical responses to desire and the account of desire in the Song of Songs.  Using Odysseus and the Sirens as an illustration, she notes how this scene reveals the Greek instinct that desire “harbors danger by rendering its…
Love is as strong as death.  But no stronger.  It’s a standoff. No, Jenson says: “death does not allow of stalemates.  If love binds lovers even in death’s despite, death is overcome by love.  Nor does the grave allow of partial retrievals; if it yields its prey, then its jealousy…
Barthian that he is, Jenson gets the point of the Song’s “seal on my heart” just right: Jesus’ “death has made us the seal of his identity: he dies ‘for’ us, in identification with us.  Now he is not what he is without us; he did not go into death…
Robert Jenson ( Song Of Songs (Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching) ) notes that Song of Songs 8:6-7 contains “pervading reference to the myths of Israel’s religious milieu: ” Mot can indeed be translated simply ‘death,’ but it is also a proper name, for the Canaanite god…
Jealousy refers to a relentless and exclusive passion and attachment.  For Solomon, it is as hard as the grave.  Once someone goes into the grave, the grave doesn’t let him back up; once it takes hold, it doesn’t let go.  Jealousy is like that.  It is “that aspect of love…
Given the “canon” that Scripture speaks “doubly” of Christ (sometimes divinely, sometimes humanly), it would seem easy for Athanasius to shuffle passages about the Father giving and the Son receiving to the “humanity” side of things.  He doesn’t, and He’s right.  The Son has all that the Father has, and…
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