Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I grew up in the 1950s. This was before the "Sixties" and the democratization, informalization, and general cheapening of the church and her worship. Ministers were Father Donovan, Pastor Eckhart, Reverend MacPherson, Mister (Episcopal) Parker, and Brother Smith. Liturgical speech was high language, sounding kind of like the King James…
Metaphor exerts a surprisingly powerful influence within our thinking. Although it is easily dismissed as little more than a figure of speech, when we attend more closely to the ways in which we use it, metaphor’s importance swiftly becomes more apparent. Although many of our metaphors have become quite invisible…
What is a tree, scientifically speaking? A mere googling gives the following answer: “a woody perennial plant, typically having a single stem or trunk growing to a considerable height and bearing lateral branches at some distance from the ground.” We can increase detail by describing its family, genus, species and…
The majority of Western evangelical Christians rarely, if ever, fast as a form of spiritual discipline. In our culture, fasting is more connected with dieting than worship, the other side of our deeply ambiguous fascination with food. Food is everywhere. We eat more than ever before, at greater speed, and…
A Grammar of Creation An understanding of the visual-musical language of the Bible must begin with Genesis 1. This is fortunate, because when explaining biblical types to academics, as opposed to children, one is repeatedly forced to start from scratch. From birth, a healthy child is attuned to rhythm and…
In an inverse Eden, a land laid waste, one works alone tending the trash. There are none like him in all the earth, inquisitive, playful and most drawn to those mysterious, dancing bipedal creatures who lost earth and left it to go wandering the vast wilderness of space. Humans have…
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Jesus’ disciples are salt and light. The salt is low, on the earth; the light is set up high on a lamp, so it can light the house. James Jordan has pointed out the connection with earth (salt) and heaven (light), and this links also to the Abrahamic promise of…
Jesus preaches the sermon to multitudes that gather for healing and to hear the gospel. They come from every point of the compass. Jesus has gone about “all Galilee,” and the crowds come to Galilee from all over the land - from the transJordan (including Syria, 4:24), from the South…
In the third of his five theological orations, Gregory Nazianzus mounts a reductio against latter-day Arians: “Solve me one more riddle. Were you present at your own generation, and are you now present to yourself, or is neither the case? If you were and are present, who were you, and…
By definition, justification must be by grace. Since the eyes are organs of judgment in Scripture, to find “favor in one’s eyes” is to be justified. Plus, “favor” just means “grace.” We can put it more strongly: Justified by grace is redundant, since “justified” means “grace in one’s eyes.”
Saul sends three sets of men to capture David. As they approach, the Spirit falls on them and they prophesy. Mission unaccomplished. Ahaziah sends three sets of men to capture Elijah. As they approach, fire falls on them and they burn up - until the captain of the last group…
Europeans saw the conquest of the Americas as a new Canaanite conquest. Once they subdued the land, what else would they do but build a temple. According to Hamblin and Seely, “Spanish missionary Toribio de Motolinia (d. 1568), for example, described the colonization and evangelization of New Spain (Mexico) as…
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