Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
10. Do not slander [tattle on] a slave to his master, Lest he curse [denounce] you and you be found guilty. The Sojourner of Proverbs 30 is a humble man. He makes this clear in verses 2-4, where he says that he is stupider than anyone else on earth, but…
In retrospect and at first glance, many of the issues that have plagued and divided the Church seem incredibly trivial. The Quartodecimians were branded as heretics for celebrating Easter on 14 Nisan. One of the issues that divided the Eastern and Western Churches in 1054 was the kind of bread…
The gifts of the wise men have been commonly interpreted as royal gifts to the infant King of the Jews. Each of the three gifts is, indeed, connected with kings and kingship in Scripture. The Lord’s anointed is pictured wearing a crown of gold in Psalm 21:3, and the gold…
The Church is not in good shape. Nearly every week we hear about another prominent Christian leader who has fallen into scandalous sin. Many shepherds feed their flocks a diet of baby food, if not outright poison. Few Churches celebrate the Lord’s Supper regularly, and few Christians appreciate its importance.…
Two things I asked of Thee, Do not refuse me before I die: Keep deception and words of falsehood far from me, Give me neither poverty nor riches, Feed me with the food that it my portion, Lest I be full and deny Thee, And say, "Who is the LORD?"…
During the Middle Ages, Joseph, the husband of Mary, was the butt of many jokes. Medieval theater and art often depicted him as something of a buffoon, decidedly marginal to the gospel story. In part, this was the unfortunate obverse of the exaltation of Mary; any man would suffer by…
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In a review of several books on Henry Miller for the TLS , Karl Orend highlights Miller’s religiosity and his sense of religious mission. He “was Buddhist for most of his life,” and considered his task to be a continuation of Whitman’s plant “to write new Bibles for our times.”…
The Economist (August 30) reports on research by a team from the University of Duisburg-Essen on animal magnetism - not animal charisma, but animals responding to the magnetic polarities of the earth. Studying pictures from Google Earth, they “concluded that cattle do generally align themselves in a north-south direction. Moreover,…
Jenson’s discussion of the “Being of the One God” at the end of the first volume of his Systematic theology is intriguing both as historical and as systematic theology. He summarizes the Greek answer to the question “What is Being” in three steps. Being is “immunity to time”; it is…
Mark 8:7 says that Jesus “blessed” the fish before distributing them to the 4000. As my colleague Toby Sumpter points out, this is the verb of the sea creatures in Gen 1:27, where Yahweh tells them to be fruitful and multiply. Jesus too, the Creator incarnate, blesses fish to multiply…
INTRODUCTION As Jesus and His three disciples descend from the mountain, they find the other disciples struggling to help a demon-possessed boy. The disciples fail. Jesus is the greater Elisha, and His disciples are like Elisha’s bumbling sidekick, Gehazi. They still lack even a mustard seed of faith (v. 20).…
Jesus told Peter, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself.” Self-denial is a basic demand of discipleship. We can’t follow Jesus if we don’t do it. Jesus is not talking about afflicting our bodies with fasting and flagellation, but about something more fundamental. Self-denial means giving…
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