Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery (Revelation 12:1-2). Then Joshua spoke…
In his post asking Ought we Anoint the Dying? Peter Leithart makes an excellent and important point about our suffering as members of Christ. However, he only parenthetically mentions that the verb in question in James 5 is not chrio but aleipho . By assuming that these words are interchangeable,…
We spend a lot of time in the church talking about what it means to live like a Christian. But what does it mean to die like a Christian? If we are to follow Christ in life, what does it mean for us to follow him in death as well?…
How would one go about answering the question posed by my title? That depends on what the question means. Obviously, different definitions of the question would require different approaches to an answer. Right off hand, I can think of at least three possible — though not necessarily mutually exclusive —…
In recent weeks and months, we have seen events that are not the event. The drama around these events is not the events themselves, but the anxiety about the events, and then even the anxiety about the anxiety about the events. That is the real event. The events in Ferguson,…
Anointing the sick, including the dying, is one of the traditional seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. The Reformers denied that the rite qualified as a sacrament. Formally, this was because anointing did not have a direct authorization from Jesus; more theologically, it was not one of the marks that…
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To her credit, Brigitte Kahl (in Horsley, ed., In the Shadow of Empire ) recognizes that Acts gives a fairly sympathetic portrait of Rome. In the various episodes where Paul is suspected of subverting the empire, “Acts makes every effort to draw as favorable a picture as possible,” not only…
How many sacraments does the church have? It depends, says Richard Baxter. One can define sacrament as “A solemn dedication of man to God by a vow expressed by some sacred ceremony, signifying mutually our covenant to God, and God’s reception of us and his covenant with us.” By this…
Introducing the Gospel reading from John 21 this morning, Chris Schlect pointed out that Jesus instructs Peter to take up the commission of Israel. Israel was supposed to be light to the nations, but refused; Jesus tells Peter to do what Israel failed to do. That fits with a couple…
The Pharisees often act as a group, but the gospels also speak of individual Pharisees (Luke 7; 11; Acts 5:34). Some of the Pharisees even show some deference to Jesus. No individual Sadducee is ever mentioned in the gospels. They are always a collective, a single mind, a united front.
Matthew uses the verb “put to silence” twice, both in chapter 22. The first time it describes the reaction of the man who arrives at the wedding feast without the proper clothing (v. 12), and in the second it describes the silence of the Sadducees after Jesus answers their question…
Jesus says that in denying the resurrection the Sadducees are misunderstanding the Scripture. How so? He’s saying, first of all, that they don’t even understand the Scripture they’ve quoted. Matthew makes this point very subtly. The quotation from Deuteronomy 25 says that the levirate brother is supposed to “raise up…
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