Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Paradosis Center at John Brown University in Siloam Spring, Arkansas, put on its first conference last week, it was a remarkable event. It was an ecumenical conference including Orthodox (John Behr, Edith Humphrey, others), Catholic (Rusty Reno, Michael Root, others), and Evangelical (Timothy George, David Lyle Jeffrey). Unusually for…
Naphtali Meshel observes in his new The "Grammar" of Sacrifice that scholars have been talking for decades about the "grammatical" character of ritual and sacrifice in general, but have never actually analyzed a specific ritual or sacrificial system grammatically. Some even talk about a "universal grammar" of sacrifice "even though…
Some Christians are rather breezy about the problem of evil. We shouldn't be. Do I need to remind you of the grisly beheadings that have taken place over the past few weeks? Do I need to remind you of the blood of innocents that’s been spilled in our own country?…
Have you ever been to a wedding where the heavens opened and a voice declared the couple “husband and wife”? Few of us have. Beautiful as they are, most marriages are quite mundane. Yet when Jesus talks about marriage, He describes it as something that God does: “What God has…
Jesus is the last and greatest of the Prophets. He is the Prophet that Moses predicted (Deuteronomy 18). That means He gives the final word, brings the blueprints for the final temple, speaks the final world into existence, and has complete and permanent access to the divine court, where He…
Paul stands against those who are “troubling” or “disturbing” the Galatians churches ( tarasso ; 1:7; also in 5:10). The reference seems to be two great troublers from the Old Testament. First, Achan is described as a “troubler” for the problems he causes in the aftermath of the battle at…
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Eran Shalev ( American Zion ) puts the Scriptural debate over slavery in the context of a shift from a predominantly Old Testament orientation to a predominantly New Testament one. But the lines were not as neat as one might think: Anti-slavery writers drew on Old Testament laws on slavery,…
During the discussion at Biola Tuesday evening, Carl Trueman expressed the worry that Reformational Catholicism was at odds with the word-centeredness of the Reformation. This post is intended as reassurance. First a bit of apologia pro vita mea , and for mea friends, inevitably mixed with a dash of Barnumesque…
It’s common - and correct - to say that “eternal life” doesn’t just refer to the duration of life. It refers to a quality of life. But we ought not to skip past the duration issue too rapidly. Duration affects quality. Knowing that we are heading toward death changes the…
While David is fleeing from Saul, he spends time near Carmel, guarding and assisting the shepherds of the wealthy Nabal. When he asks Nabal to let his men participate in the sheep-shearing festivities, Nabal rebuffs him, and David gets ready to attack Nabal’s house (1 Samuel 25). Fortunately, Nabal has…
Jesus called people to eat his flesh and drink His blood (John 6). It scandalized His hearers and led to accusations of cannibalism. Christian mystics have spoken of sacramental communion with erotic overtones, using the love-feast of the Song of Songs as a paradigm. Brannon Hancock thinks that much Christian…
Barth famously condemned infant baptism as a wound in the body of Christ, and that resounding Nein has been taken as a natural application of Barth’s theology as a whole. Some have seen it as a stark choice: Barth or infant baptism. W. Travis McMaken thinks there’s more to say,…
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