Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Evangelistic Message to the Uninformed: 1 Timothy 3.14-16 Even though this is written as a sermon for delivery, and even though it was preached in a homiletics class, I decided I can’t post it as a sermon because it was not truly preached at a place where nonchristians wanted to…
If we only read the Gospels of Mark and Luke, we might get the impression that Jesus’ ascension was on resurrection Sunday. Matthew speaks of going to Galilee but he does not put things into a clear time frame. John shows us that Jesus appeared to the disciples eight days…
The most cursory glance at the history of Western literature reveals that it has been deeply influenced by the Bible. Some of the greatest classics of Western literature draw their plots, characters, and ideas largely from Scripture; Dante’s Divine Comedy and Milton’s Paradise Lost are two of the most notable…
Few themes emerge as profoundly and persistently in the streams of biblical narrative as the conflict between light and darkness, and the juxtaposition of humanity with monstrosity. These themes not only weave through the fabric of Scripture, emerging in stories from Genesis to Revelation, but also stitch together the human…
In John Wenham’s work, Easter Enigma , he devotes an entire chapter to Mary Magdalene, which is rephrased and summarized here. 1 One of the interesting things that Wenham said was that Mary Magdalene was the second “most favored woman in the Bible.” 2 He adds, “Yet apart from a…
God made man to live in a larger relational context, and even in high rebellion, man cannot escape his created nature. Instead, that nature takes revenge on rebellious man. Autonomous and alone, the self craves absolution but recognizes no authority that might give it; it thirsts for glory but rejects…
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Lessing on Hamann: “His writings seem to be tests of manhood for those who claim to be polyhistorians. They truly require a little knowledge of everything.” This from John Betz’s After Enlightenment: Hamann as Post-Secular Visionary , fresh out from Wiley-Blackwell.
NT Wright explains the meaning of the exaltation of the Son (Philippians 2): “It is the affirmation, by God the Father, that the incarnation and death of Jesus really was the revelation of the divine love in action. In giving to Jesus the title kurios , and in granting him…
The numerological structure of Philippians 2:1-2 is intriguingly complex. Verse 1 is explicitly structured by four conditional clauses, each introduced by “if” ( ei ). But this fourfold structure is crossed by a list of five nouns: paraklesis , persuasive address ( paramuthion ), koinonia , bowels, innards. And the…
During the 1870s, Bismarck’s Germany embarked on a legislative program that aimed among other things at secularizing education and resulted in a religiously pluralist Germany. This might look like progress in liberty and toleration, but the whole process was driven by anti-Catholic hatred and prejudice, and by fear about clerical…
Sanders’s work on Jesus is flawed by an odd adherence to conclusions the premises of which he rejects. In Jesus and Judaism he concludes that Jesus expected some kind of cataclysmic intervention by God in the future, yet also insists that he is suspending judgment about the form of intervention…
In a web article examining NT Wright’s arguments regarding Philippians 2:6, Dennis Burk writes, “If harpagmov be understood according to the above analysis, then Christ is said not to have snatched at or grasped for equality with God. Though he was himself true deity existing in the form of God…
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