Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Failure of the Church Yet a third factor played an important role in this historical development, in addition to the imperial adoption of icons and the rise of the icons of the holy man. Brown writes: "The great Christian basilicas of the previous centuries tended to stand empty, except…
The three large patriarchal narratives of Genesis concern the three aspects of the cosmos: matter, space, and time. Over these three is man given dominion. Lucifer was originally appointed to train man in this dominion, but he chose to lead man into rebellion instead. Thus, the Angel of Yahweh replaced…
Part 6: Living in a Dying World (continued) The "Trivium" (continued) The five stages of education are simply the five stages of the covenant as God administers it in human life and history, and in the liturgy of covenant renewal: First, God announces Himself. "I am Yahweh Your God." He…
The following essay is tentative and exploratory, offered for your consideration. It seems to me that the ritual of the Ascension Offering (incorrectly translated as Burnt Offering) of Leviticus 1 is a symbolic recapitulation of Genesis 1, which thereby portrays the sacrificial ritual as way of moving from a fallen…
Just as the vast majority of evangelical Christians in America today are Arminian and Baptist, so the vast majority do not believe in a creation around 4000 BC. I don’t expect any of these three situations to change anytime soon. Powerful presuppositions are at work in all three instances, along…
The Iconoclastic Controversy Continuing Pagan Influence How did images creep in? To begin with, there was in the post-Constantinian Church a concerted effort on the part of the semi-pagans to interpret Christianity in essentially pantheistic terms. The heretics put God and man on a continuum of "being," so that God…
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In his commentary on the Johannine epistles, I. Howard Marshall notes A. Wurm’s thesis that John’s opponents were Jews. John’s opponents claim to know the Father, but deny Jesus is the Christ, a position that is certainly compatible with Judaism. Marshall dismisses Wurm’s thesis because John treats his opponents as…
Brown suggests that the structure of John’s gospel sets the pattern for the first epistle. His outline of the gospel is: A. Prologue, 1:1-18. B. Book of Signs, 1:19-12:50. C. Book of Glory, 13:1-20:29. D. Epilogue, ch. 21. And the first epistle: A. Prologue, 1:1-4. B. Part 1, 1:5-3:10 (God…
Raymond Brown notes that a number of scholars have identified the adversaries of 1 John as “Jews who denied that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God.” He finds this implausible since it’s hard to see how Jews could be “looked on as people who placed little emphasis on…
Raymond Brown notes that a number of scholars have identified the adversaries of 1 John as “Jews who denied that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God.” He finds this implausible since it’s hard to see how Jews could be “looked on as people who placed little emphasis on…
Peter van Inwagen distinguishes nicely between analytical philosophy as a “particular” form of philosophy and as a “universal” philosophical mode, and gives a tidily potted history: “As a particular, it is a confluence of streams of thought whose springs were in Britain, Austria, Poland and the United States. It has…
According to Paul Quinn (in the TLS), Alexander Theroux’s 700-page Darconville’s Cat was a product of jilted love. “Do your worst,” she had said when Theroux threatened to expose her in fiction, and he did: Theroux “encrypted his former lover’s name in acrostics and anagrams, and even cited her as…
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