Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
21. Under three things the earth quakes. And under four, it cannot bear up. 22. Under a slave when he becomes king, And a fool when he is satisfied with food, 23. Under an odious woman when she gets a husband, And a maidservant when she supplants her mistress. The…
We have looked at the prima facie evidence for a short chronology in Ezra-Nehemiah, a chronology that assumes that the Artaxerxes of Ezra 7ff. and Nehemiah is in fact Darius. This month we examine the argument against the short chronology. There is only one argument, and that is that the…
The Priestly Genealogy Jeshua the high priest, who returned with Zerubbabel, was not a young man at the time. We know this because his father, Jehozadak, was taken into captivity (1 Chron. 6:15). Thus was 50 years before the decree of Cyrus (2 Kings 25:18-22, by implication). Jehozadak’s father Seraiah,…
Thomas C. Oden, After Modernity . . . What? Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990. Reviewed by Rev. Jeffrey Meyers. Reading Oden’s After Modernity . . . What? was tonic. There were passages that launched me out of my chair with a hoot to pace the office floor — of course, the…
Matthew records that Jesus "withdrew" to Galilee to begin His public ministry there after He "heard that John had been delivered up" (Mt. 4:12). Matthew’s typically matter-of-fact style veils the truly remarkable character of Jesus’ withdrawal. Matthew has been presenting Jesus as the Messiah, the Seed of Abraham and Son…
John Brown called this one of the most difficult passages in the entire epistle to the Hebrews, and Hebrews is no easy book. Several questions confront us as we read and meditate on these verses. First, in what sense did the Old Testament saints described in verses 4-38 not receive…
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Many Protestants still think of the Catholic church as a monolithic, uniform church. It’s been a long time since Catholics have thought of the church that way. Aloys Grillmeier sums up the results of Vatican II’s embrace of communio ecclesiology: “catholicity is understood as a union of opposites. The people…
Nicholas Rescher argues in Unknowability that there are certain things that logically cannot be known, such as “an idea that will never occur to any human being.” Prominent among unknowables are the unknowables of science. Given the way scientific research and discovery work, it is impossible for present science to…
Heaven, earth, sea: That three-decker universe is standard-issue in biblical cosmology (Exodus 20:11; Psalm 69:34; 96:11; 135:6; 146:6; Revelation 10:6). Occasionally a second heaven is added to the scheme (Nehemiah 9:6). But when the Lamb ascends to take the book, praise arises from four dimensions of creation: heaven, earth, under…
Thomas Guarino ( Vincent of Lerins ) outlines Newman’s arguments against the Vincentian canon (orthodoxy is what is taught always, everywhere, by everyone). In his Essay on Development , Newman provides historical examples “to demonstrate that the first rule is, at beast, a leaky and dubious criterion. As Newman boldly…
In his preface to Receptive Ecumenism , Paul Murray explains that the “driving assumption is that if all were to be asking and acting upon this question, even relatively independently of each other, then all would be moving, albeit somewhat unpredictably, and in such a fashion as might open up…
As Avery Dulles recounts it in The Catholicity of the Church , the reforms of Vatican II came partly from what Paul Murray calls “ receptive ecumenism ,” an ecumenism of attentive listening to the other. Dulles wasn’t exactly a receptive ecumenist himself. While acknowledging that “the Church can certainly…
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