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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David Virtue has a long, long list of non-participants at Lambeth, many representing the most vibrant portions of the Anglican communion. He estimates that 450-500 Anglican bishops are missing.
Freundlieb offers several criticisms of Saussure’s notion that language is purely differential. First, “If the meaning of a term could not be specified positively but only in relation to (all the?) other terms in the lexicon, no one could ever learn the vocabulary of a language, except in one stroke…
In an article in Poetics Today , Dieter Freundlieb notes that “Saussure argues that ‘in language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that…
At least Thiselton gets James Barr right. Asked about the meaning of ekklesia in the New Testament, “we might say (a) ‘the Church is the Body of Christ’ (b) ‘the Church is the first installment of the Kingdom of God’ (c) ‘the Church is the Bride of Christ, and other…
Much biblical interpretation today is minimalist. Deliberately so. Anthony Thiselton approvingly quotes this from Eugene Nida: “The correct meaning of any term is that which contributes least to the total context.” Thiselton expounds: “we might define the semantic values of ‘green’ in several ways: as a colour, as meaning inexperienced,…
Context determines the meaning of a word, right? But “context” refers, in the first instance, to other words. But their meaning must also be determined by context? When you take all the words away, what’s left of the “context” that’s supposed to determine the word’s meaning? Mustn’t individual words and…
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