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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Chris Tilling’s Beyond Old and New Perspectives on Paul reviews, summarizes, evaluates the work of Douglas Campbell, especially his monumental The Deliverance of God . It’s a thorough review. There are essays from leading New Testament scholars, and Campbell responds to each, and also contributes several substantial essays of his…
Jesus comes to a fig tree looking for fruit, and finds only leaves. He curses the tree (Mark 11:12-14). In the next scene, He’s in the temple throwing the furniture and calling it a den of brigands (vv. 15-18). The next morning, the fig tree is withered, and Jesus talks…
When Israel camps around the tabernacle at Sinai, Yahweh lays out a map for the tribes, the Levites and priests forming the inner cordon around the tent and the tribes arranged more distantly with groups of three at each point of the compass (Numbers 2). Each group has a lead…
Richard Plass and James Cofield base their book, The Relational Soul , with the claim that “a deep participation in the life of another is the lifeblood of the soul” (15). Relationships are not epiphenomenal or added extras. They form the core of the soul. Plass and Cofield cite recent…
Belden Lane knows that his thesis is surprising. In fact, the word “surprising” appears in the subtitle of his 2011 Ravished by Beauty , a study of Reformed spirituality’s “surprising legacy.” Neither ravishment nor beauty fits the stereotype of Reformed Christianity. But Lane says that both are central to Reformed…
In the Song of Songs, the Lover calls His beloved out to romp, encouraging her by telling her it’s the time of love - springtime, when everything comes back to life. There are seven signs of the new creation of spring: winter past, rain over, flowers appear, pruning, turtledoves coo,…
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