Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In a recent article in Biblical Horizons , I argued that the imagery of James 1:21 alludes to baptism, and particularly to baptism as an ordination and incorporation into the holy priesthood. This understanding of baptism as ordination to priesthood is not, I have since discovered, original, but in fact…
He will be a priest on his throne, and the counsel of peace will be between the two of them (Zechariah 6:13b). A prime difficulty in the interpretation of this verse is the antecedent of the pronoun "them." A number of alternatives have been offered. Some suggest that the "two"…
Like certain kinds of music, the unchanging rhythm of Aquinas's Summa gets into your bones. Read a few sections and it begins to run through your head. You start drumming your fingers, humming, swaying gently to the rhythm of Videtur-Sed Contra-Responsio, Videtur-Sed Contra-Responsio, “It seems-On the contrary-I answer.” The only…
The Book of Revelation is a gold mine of liturgical information. The various hymns and exclamations in Revelation have always been used in Christian worship. As I have been studying Revelation this year, it occurred to me that make a complete hymn out of the various hymns in the book.…
In the book of Revelation we find a triad of Strong Angels, and another triad of Other Angels. The purpose of this essay is to explore the Biblical background of these two sets, and thus fill out their meaning. The first triad of angels we encounter in the Bible comes…
In Revelation, the term aggelos means messenger, of course, but with a special emphasis on messenger as covenant administrator. This is immediately obvious from the fact that the angels are constantly acting to enforce the covenant one way or another: sealing people, bringing judgment, calling for repentance, etc. They are…
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Traveling by sea to Rome, Paul encounters a storm, plunges into the sea and then arrives at Malta.  He is an unreluctant Jonah, cross the sea westward to call a Gentile empire to repentance. But why the unusually detailed travelogue in Acts 27?  Sidon, Cyprus, Cilicia, Pamphylia, Myra in Lycia,…
Let us suppose that the Son dwells in flesh, dies to flesh, rises in Spirit, all to prepare a new humanity to receive the radiance of light within.  What might be wrong with that? One objection might be: Why does God need time to prepare a body?  As a student,…
What difference does the incarnation make?  For Athanasius, it means (among other things, of course) that grace is worked from within humanity rather than being offered extrinsically from without, as grace was given to Adam. Redemption history is a movement from extrinsic to intrinsic grace, as the Father raises Adam’s…
Levinas opposes the reduction of the Other to the Same. So, with more reason, does Athanasius: The Father and Son are not one in the sense that “one thing is twice named, so that the Same ( ton auton ) becomes at one time Father, at another time His own…
Chee-Chiew Lee has an interesting article on the phrase “company of nations” in Genesis 35:11.  She links the promise that Jacob will become a company of nations to the promise that Abraham would be a father of many nations in Genesis 17:4-5.  But 35:11 adds an important gloss to the…
Peter Singer ( Hegel: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) ) gives a neat summary of the paradoxes of desire in Hegel: “Desire appeared as the expression of the fact that self-consciousness needs an external object, and yet finds itself limited by anything that is outside itself.  But to…
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