Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I thought it might be good to put this up here, since it is 14 years old, and itself reflects earlier discussion. From this you can see that we at BH have been considering this notion for quite some time. Clearly, the last word has not been said. — James…
Hopefully, my commentary on James will be out later this year. But here are a few chiasms for your consideration. I think the James 5 chiasm orginally came from Doug Jordan. The entire book of James is focused on how the pastors and leaders (“brothers”) of the church use their…
In my first post I noted that the parables of Jesus were not simply illustrative stories. They are really nothing like the kind of simple, homely illustrations that preachers often use to explain difficult concepts to their congregations. Just to be clear: there’s nothing wrong with illustrating one’s sermonic statements.…
Ephesians is often treated as a pure type example of the Pauline method that “the indicative preceds the imperative.” But what Paul does first is pray . Simply reading verse 3 and following involves readers in a prayer of thanksgiving to God–and much more so for those listening to the…
Yesterday, I took part with my oldest son in a church-sponsored city outreach project (not because I’m especially prone to such behavior but because my son has a Boy Scout requirement that this would help him meet). Before we were sent out on our various jobs, the leader gave a…
There is a scene in Prince Caspian , the second in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia that helps explain why it is we have four Gospels, that is four accounts of the Good News of Jesus Christ—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It is the account of Lucy’s longed-for experience…
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Timothy Furry’s Allegorizing History is a careful, engaging study of the Venerable Bede’s understanding of history, and of biblical hermeneutics. But perhaps the book’s greatest interest comes at the end, in a more theoretical conclusion, where Furry draws on the work of Frank Ankersmit to argue that history-writing is invariably…
Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s contribution to Trinity and Salvation is on the Trinity and music. Fitzgerald overstates when she called about “musical refutation” of heresy, but her analogies are illuminating. She points to chords as vestigiae Trinitatis : “Each note of the major triad has its own specific relationship with the other…
According to Frederick Ahl ( Metaformations , 18), we have an irrefutable syllogism to demonstrate that puns aren’t found in serious poetry like the Aeneid: “Vergil is a great poet. Puns are not the stuff of great poetry. Therefore Vergil cannot be using puns.” Except that Vergil seems to do…
Typically, wings in the Bible are appendages of birds (Genesis 1:21), so much so that “winged-thing” (substantive of kanaph ) becomes a synonym for bird (cf. Genesis 7:14; bird is ‘oph ). Bird wings are mentioned in the rite for the ascension offering from birds (Leviticus 1:17). The earth’s four…
Encyclopedic Isidore of Seville was one of the most widely-read early Christian writers. His analysis of ancient mythology in Etymologies summarized and extended a tradition that combined several components: Etymologies of the names of gods; euhemerist interpretation of myths as enhanced accounts of historical events; and moral indignation at the…
According Thomas Laqueur’s 2004 Solitary Sex , masturbation wasn’t a major concern in sexual ethics until fairly recently. Stephen Greenblatt summarized the argument in a 2004 review in the NYRB : “Medieval Christian theologians . . . did have a clear concept of masturbation as a sin, but it was…
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