Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
1 Chronicles 9:1 seems to bring the genealogies of 1 Chronicles to an end. The Chronicler has recorded the genealogy of the human race from Adam, focusing on the descendants of Abraham through Jacob. Summing it all up, he says, “So all Israel was enrolled by genealogies; and behold, they…
The “personalist” understanding of the Trinity, articulated most influentially in the work of John Zizioulas, has fallen on hard times. Recent scholars have attacked Zizioulas’s idea that Cappadocian Trinitarianism represented an ontological revolution, hammering on the distinction between divine and human personhood. Michel Barnes’s conclusion is the most drastic of…
Biblical Theology is often defined as the historical unfolding of God’s revelation, or of God’s revelation and of the history of his covenantal redemption and transformation of humanity and the world. In practice, Biblical Theology is usually broader than this, and also includes the study of literary structure and of…
We are made to be happy. Created to enter into the eternal joy of God, our whole being inclines to that end, but the fallen world has put forth barriers and by our own sin we bar ourselves from that endless delight, and death blinds us to that reality. Yet…
At the end of Revelation, John sees the heavenly city descending to earth. The city shines with the brilliance of God's glory, which lightens the nations, so that kings bring their glory to the city. This is not a vision of the final new heaven and new earth. It's a…
“No one has ever seen God,” writes John (John 1:18). If this is the case, then how can we speak about God? Some people say we actually cannot. Or at least we cannot speak about God positively, i.e. who He is. We can only say who or what God is…
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At the chiastic center of John 9, the Jews interrogate the blind man’s parents, threatening them with expulsion from the synagogue if they confess Jesus. Why do the parents appear? The answer goes back to the disciples’ question at the beginning of the chapter: Jesus says the parents have not…
Several of my students have pointed to the link between John 8 and 9. Jesus declares that He is the light of the world in 8:12, but because of the opposition of the Jews and their intent to kill Him, He withdraws and hides Himself - He hides the light…
Several of my students in a Shakespeare elective have pointed to the way Shakespeare’s use of disguise and deception in comedy plays into his evangelical “lose life to find it” theme. Characters become more fully themselves by quite literally becoming other than themselves. Viola becomes Cesario, but through that otherness…
In a paper on the chiastic structure of Midsummer Night’s Dream , a student, Jason Helsel, suggests that two scenes with the mechanicals “serve as a link or portal between the city and the forest.” Nicely put; the path from the city of law and justice to the magical world…
Jesus describes a violent and tumultuous mission (Matthew 10). They Twelve will display great power, and arouse vicious opposition. They will advance the kingdom, but the violent will try to arrest the kingdom by force, by crosses and killings and exclusions. But the last words of this discourse give us…
For Jesus’ first-century disciples, estrangement from family members was a personal and social disaster. They lost their identity, their network of business and personal connections, their social and economic safety net, their prospects for future inheritance. Jesus encouraged His disciples by promising that they would receive far more than they…
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