Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
After the identification of the recipients of his letter at the beginning of Revelation, John gives a benediction that resembles the benedictions of the Pauline letters. He pronounces grace/favor and peace, grace and favor that lead to peace, grace that leads to fullness and harmony that is the biblical definition…
Throughout the latter half of 1-2 Samuel, Saul and David are locked in hand-to-hand combat. It seems an unequal contest. All the heavy artillery is on Saul's side. To understand the full scope of the conflict, we need to back up to the beginning of the book. Prior to Saul's…
Last week, I lectured at Ostrog Academy in Ostrog, Ukraine, and at a pastors' conference in Kyiv. The latter was co-sponsored by Trinity House and the Alliance of Reformed Churches in Ukraine. I offer my impressions of Ukraine this morning at Firstthings.com .
Why do I bristle when I see someone with white wires hanging from his ears, flipping through what must be a million songs downloaded onto his iPod? No doubt, it’s the threat of the new. I've only recently begun carrying a cell phone, and now I hear tell of compact…
Judah is in terrible shape (Isaiah 57). Yahweh told Israel to worship Him only at the temple, but the people worship on every hill and under every green and leafy tree. He commanded them to worship Him alone, but they are devoted to many gods. Worshipers set up their beds…
Like any great writer, the Lord foreshadows late happenings in early happenings. Like many greater writers, the Lord ends where he begins, returning to a glorified Edenic city-sanctuary at the end of his cosmic story. The Lord writes with history, real people and events, not merely with words. But His…
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Matthias Grebe’s Election, Atonement, and the Holy Spirit is an impressive piece of work. Grebe is as much at home in Barth and Barthian scholarship as in Leviticus and Old Testament scholarship, and the driving question of his book has to do with dogmatic logic that connects election and atonement…
John eats a book from an angel and is told to prophesy (Revelation 10:10-11). But the angel doesn’t commission him as prophet. Rather, “ they said, ‘You must prophesy’” (v. 11). Who are they? The nearest plural speakers are the thunders (10:3-4). It seems that the seven thunders commission John…
After reviewing Greek texts that describe the “strife of the elements,” Eduard Schweitzer summarizes the grim world of the ancients: He stresses “how widespread the conviction was that the four elements, though originally in a harmony of equilibrium, were continually threatening the existence of the world by their ‘mighty strife’…
Fernando Belo’s summary of the symbolic system of purity ( A Materialist Reading of the Gospel of Mark , 38-9) is a bit too schematic, but still illuminating. He sees two overlapping systems in the Pentateuch: one of pollution/contagion and one of debt. I focus on the first. Israel’s “symbolic…
Struggling to articulate the cosmic deliverance of Romans 8, Stanislas Breton ( A Radical Philosophy of Saint Paul , 116-7) writes that “heaven and earth . . . are traversed by a visceral yearning orienting them toward and subordinating them to another kingdom, one that is more than human precisely…
The incomparable Martin Hengel begins The Atonement with a question: Did Greco-Roman culture have categories to understand Jesus’ death as an expiatory sacrifice? He answers with a dense Hengelian catalog of mythic and historical instances of the apotheosis of heroes, death for the fatherland, death for the truth, expelled pharmakoi…
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