Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Paul writes to Jews, “You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?” (Romans 2:22b) The English translation “rob temples” makes readers think of pagan temples. There was only one Temple for Israel, so robbing more than one would indicate other temples are in view. And if the Jews wanted to…
Two offerings Humanity’s first vocation involves guarding and serving the trees that emerge from the ground (Genesis 2:15). God provides these trees to humanity for food. A serpent appears and tempts the couple to eat from a special forbidden tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Humanity…
At the outset of the Torah (as Christians understand it), a triune God creates the heavens and earth over the course of a seven-day week. Why? What’s the connection between the three and the seven? Could a triune God have created the world over any period of time he chose?…
How relevant to the modern reader are the flying axe head of Deuteronomy 19:5 and the roof parapet of Deuteronomy 22:8? Indeed, how relevant were they to the daily lives of Israelites thirty-five hundred years ago? Suppose that accidental falls from rooftops were exceedingly uncommon in ancient Israel, or that…
1 For most of my life, the standing of the American church as a source of national social and political order was measured by reports from the front of the so-called “culture wars.” 2 Memory brings to mind battles over feminism and the ERA, so-called gay rights, the breakdown of…
But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel…’ And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the…
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Laurence Moore's Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans is a study of American religion that is not considered “mainstream” or “mainline”—Mormons, Catholics, Jews, Christian Science, Fundamentalists, Black churches. The goal is not to fill in a gap. The goal is to challenge the assumption that the “mainline” should function…
After John introduces the new scene – “I saw another sign in the heaven, great and marvelous” – the sign is described with two clauses (Revelation 15:1). The first is, woodenly translated, “angels seven having plagues seven the last”; and the second it “in them finished the passion of God.”…
Both Old and New Testaments, writes David Martin ( Pentecostalism , 12) include principles that “by persistent extension and deepening . . . can divest systems of authority of their justification and turn law into a matter of inward judgement and sincerity rather than external observance.” “Rend your heart and…
Greek myths valorize blindness. Tiresias is a blind seer, and when Oedipus finally “sees,” he becomes Tiresias, digging out his eyes with Jocasta's brooches. The bard who sings of the Trojan War in the Odyssey is, like Homer himself, blind. For the Greeks, the sightless are the true seers. Scripture…
The saints playing harps and singing on the fiery firmament are there because they are victorious over three enemies: the beast, the image of the beast, and the number of the beast's name (Revelation 15:2). When we look back at how those three are presented earlier in Revelation, we realize…
Girard's theory of scapegoating as the great virtue of explaining how the death of Jesus can remake human society. By refusing to acknowledge sin, Jesus becomes the innocent scapegoat, and thereby exposes the scapegoat mechanism for what it is. That exposure is the good news, and undoes the perverse dynamics…
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