Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I mentioned last month ( BH 82) in my essay "Like a Dove" that Genesis 8 is a recapitulation of Genesis 1. Let me explicate that assertion here. Of course, the world after the Flood is a new creation, so we may expect a recapitulation of the first creation. It…
The book of Esther is one of the most neglected of the books of the Bible. To be sure, sermons are preached on it, and commentaries have occasionally been written on it, but almost without exception Esther has been interpreted in isolation from the rest of Biblical history, chronology, and…
Dear Mr. ______, . . . Here is how I look at the geocentricity question. Since I don’t recall what I wrote you before, I may be repeating some things. 1. The Bible does not teach it. Biblical passages used to support the idea are being misinterpreted. My original paper…
Answer 4 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is often taken as a magnificent answer to the question, "What is God?" It reads: "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." Presbyterians are fond of praising this statement, preaching on it,…
The gospels tell us that at Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him "in bodily form like a dove" (Luke 3:22 & parallels). Biblically sensitive commentators have associated this event with three Old Testament parallels: (1) the hovering of the Spirit over the creation in Genesis 1:2; (2) the…
This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. (John 8:6) The story of the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:11) has been part of the canonical Christian Bible from its earliest…
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Uche Anizor writes to thank me for my review of his recent Kings and Priests , and to correct some misstatements. First, I complained in my review that he didn’t give attention to the role of the pastor as lead priest-king-reader in a community of readers. In fact., he does.…
In February 2013, I predicted that the GOP would buckle on gay marriage. It was an easy, unoriginal prediction, and the evidence continues to pile up. Chris Geidner reports at BuzzFeed : “Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — one of the Republicans often discussed as a potential 2016 presidential nominee —…
Sam Wells ends his appreciative Christian Century review of Rowan Williams’s Faith in the Public Square with this incisive comment: “The task is not simply to expose the inadequacy of a world without God or to show the collaborative spirit of religious engagement in the common good. It surely must…
Christopher Beeley’s Leading God’s People is a pastoral guide drawn whose wisdom is drawn from the great pastoral theologians of the early church. In an opening chapter on leadership in the church, Beeley observes that early pastors complained about being pulled here and there from their primary tasks - “preaching,…
In a comment on the description of Cyrus as a “shepherd” in Isaiah 44:24-45-7, John Goldingay ( The Theology of the Book of Isaiah , 66-7) observes that “in Old Testament times, ‘shepherd’ was a recognizable way to describe the role of a king. A shepherd is in charge of…
In her study of Eucharist and the Poetic Imagination in Early Modern England , Sophie Read observes that since Donne never wrote directly on the sacramental debates of the Reformation era, his view has to be “reconstructed . . . from its rhetorical trace” (86). Puns provide one source. A…
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