Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
References to the Son of Man coming on the clouds occur five times in the Synoptic Gospels. Three times such expressions appear in the parallel accounts of the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24:30; Mark 13:36; Luke 21:27). Then, in parallel accounts of Jesus’ trial before the leaders of Israel, such expressions…
Just what the difference is in the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and the New Testament is a question not so easily answered. The distinction is often said to be that in the Old Testament the Holy Spirit is on the believer, but in the New…
1. Introduction You should think of 1917 at church on Sunday. Why? Let me explain. There's one film every Oscar season which everyone seems to have watched—your parents, your colleagues, even your pastor. This year, it's 1917— Sam Mendes' WW1 epic following two British Tommies on a seemingly impossible quest…
This piece was originally part of the Bowyer response to the Theopolis series surrounding Professor McDermott’s essay, “Rethinking Israel.” For the sake of brevity, it was removed from the initial response, to be published as a standalone piece. As we’ve argued previously , we are strongly supportive of the right…
Richard Bauckham’s groundbreaking work, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony , is profoundly insightful, but the message of the book is hampered by the presupposition of Marcan priority. Ironically the place where this assumption perhaps does its most damage is in Bauckham’s discussion of the apostle Matthew…
The Protestant Reformation was defined by certain clarifying disagreements between the medieval Church and those who came to be known as Protestant Reformers. Chief among these was the nature of justification: whether one was justified by works, or by faith and works, or—as Martin Luther contended—by faith alone. Now over…
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The typological pattern of Ruth is: Naomi, the Jewish widow, is bereft; the Gentile daughter Ruth joins her; Naomi gets a savior when Boaz attaches himself to Ruth . That is, the pattern is not “Savior, then incorporation of Gentiles” but “incorporation of Gentiles, then Savior.” In the fulfillment, it’s…
I’ve been listening all day to piano and orchestral music from several Chinese composers: Shande Ding, Yah-jun Hua, Wen-cheng Lu, Guang Ren, Bi-guang Tang, Lishan Wang, Jianer Zhu. They combine traditional Chinese music with Western forms, and are far more accessible than many contemporary Western composers. They are not naive…
Milbank finds Augustine’s theory of signs unsatisfactory, since signs are there only to “recall res ” and “finally to recall spiritual res in the soul, where Christ speaks, wordlessly.” At the same time, he finds a “counter-failing tendency” in Augustine’s notion of the interior word, since that “construes thought as…
Augustine is charged with being proto-Cartesian when he locates the imago Dei in the mind or soul. Maybe, but we need to ask what he says about that imago . Among other things, he sees the soul’s capacity to beget an inner word that is both different from and yet…
John 6:53: Jesus therefore said to them, Truly, Truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him…
Docetism can take subtle forms. We can affirm that Jesus was truly human, with human hands and human eyes and human feet and human hair. But we fall into docetism if we fail to see how specific Jesus’ humanity is. The Son became human, but we need to be more…
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