Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Part 1 We do not understand the role of women in ministry because we do not understand the role of men in ministry. We do not understand the role of men in ministry because we do not understand the church. We do not understand the church because the consumer culture…
1. One structure The Creation account (G1:1-2:4) conspicuously conveys meaning using the literary shape of the text. The narrative is told with formulaic patterns, repetitions, and parallelism. The Garden account is different. It is viewed as a separate text, with its own author, employing its own structure. This second account’s…
I was reading James Jordan’s Creation in Six Days while also preparing for Trinity Sunday in which the gospel reading is John 3:1-15. As providence would have it Jordan dropped an easter egg for me along the lines of baptism. In chapter 5 he points out, “ On the second…
It's true. There is no verse in the New Testament that commands or records an infant baptism. This poses a problem for some Christians. Those who only look for explicit commands, or those whose theology is limited to the New Testament, will conclude that infant baptism is not biblical and…
1. Goal This paper’s goal is to identify and describe a literary strategy employed by scripture, namely using two episodes that cover similar territory or themes using details drawn from opposite ends of a number of spectrums. Once described the reader may recognize numerous other instances of this strategy in…
Numbers 14 records the tragic story of Israel’s decision to rebel against Yahweh and Moses. Twelve spies had been sent into the land to bring back a report to Israel. All twelve spies agreed: “We went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey”…
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Prior to the 18th century, writes Mark Evan Bonds, instrumental music was considered inferior to music that accompanied words ( Wordless Rhetoric ). According to the artistic theory developed by Johann Georg Sulzer, “instrumental music . . . can be pleasing and at times moving, but its ‘meaning' is relatively…
Paul's speech on the Areopagus is the second of three programmatic speeches in Acts. Robert Tannehill notes ( The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts ) that they trace the progression of Paul's mission: “Careful planning is indicated by the fact that we have three different types of speeches addressed to three…
In his now-classic Sources of the Self (143-4), Charles Taylor observes that Descartes is “in many ways profoundly Augustinian: the emphasis on radical reflexivity, the importance of the cogito, the central role of a proof of God's existence which starts from ‘within,' from features of my own ideas, instead of…
Mark Evan Bonds's Absolute Music is a study of 19th-century debates concerning the purity or absoluteness of music, the question of the possibility and/or propriety of segregating music from the rest of the world, music as a sheer aesthetic experience, an experience of pure beauty or simple form. It's a…
Robert Tannehill points out in the second volume of his Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts that Acts 16-19 depicts a recurring “public accusation type-scene.” Prior to chapter 16, the public accusations against Paul and his associates are not highlighted. After chapter 16, they are. “In 16:20-21 Romans accuse the mission of…
Matthew B. Crawford argues in The World Beyond Your Head that things discipline our attention and thus make genuine knowledge of the world possible: “ things that can serve as a kind of authority for us, by way of structuring our attention. The design of things—for example, cars and children’s…
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