Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Summary In what follows, I will consider the “year-stamps” employed in Scripture, i.e., statements of the form, “Such-and-such an event took place in the Xth year of Y.” In the process, I will suggest some ways in which the Biblical narrative might relate to events in the extra-Biblical world, though…
In the first essay on the parable of the Prodigal Son, I suggested that the problems commentators and others encounter in interpreting Jesus three-part parable are not accidental. These are not just problems in our ignorance of cultural background. They are intentional features of the stories —stories designed to poke…
The story of the Prodigal Son is perhaps the most well-known story in the Bible. As others have observed, it may also be one of the most misunderstood. In two short essays, I will point out features of this story that are commonly neglected, aspects of Jesus’ parable that might…
The parable of Lazarus and the nameless rich man is not an independent story. It is part of a long context that begins in Luke 15:1, where Jesus is eating with tax collectors and sinners and the scribes and Pharisees grumble. In response to their hardheartedness, Jesus tells a three-part…
The Bible is written so that even when a reader cannot pick up on what might be deeper or more detailed aspects of a text, there is virtually always a message to be heard. In the ancient world, where the “reader” of Scripture would likely be a church official facing…
The distinction between garden (or vineyard) and field begins in Genesis 2. This relates to the ordering of the formless world. Plants of the field are contrasted with the garden planted by God in Genesis 2:5&8. Later on, under the Old Covenant the Israelites will be required to keep their…
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Spinoza summarizes the common opinion of his day: “They suppose, forsooth, that God is inactive so long as nature works in her accustomed order, and vice versa , that the power of nature and natural causes are idle so long as God is acting: thus they imagine two powers distinct…
Spinoza writes in his Theologico-Political Treatise that “the sign of circumcision is, as I think, so important, that I could persuade myself that it would preserve the nation forever. Nay, I would go so far as to believe that if the foundations of their religion have not emasculated their minds…
Calvin described Scripture as an accommodation to human capacities - God babbles to us like a parent to a baby. Spinoza and Galileo appealed to the same principle. For Galileo, it was a way of retaining the truth of Scripture, at least as regards matters of faith, while also maintaining…
Frampton’s book makes it clear that the appeal of Cartesian method was its promise to cut through the fog of skepticism and debate and get to demonstrable certainty. Lodeqijk Meyer’s preface to Spinoza’s Principia philosophiae Cartesianae (1663) makes this explicit: “You will find that with the exception of mathematics hardly…
When the Arminian pastor at Warmond was dismissed from his post after Dordt, the congregation refused the Gomarist pastor sent to fill the vacancy. Instead, led by Gijsbert van der Kodde, the church organized itself into a “college,” a democratically organized Bible study group, devoted, as they thought, to the…
Grotius “proved” the truth of the Bible by saying that “in their stories as well as in the rules they give, nothing is taught that is unworthy of God, nothing that is not conducive to the best conduct of life, whereas poets, philosophers and all those who claim to instruct…
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