Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the books of 1 and 2 Corinthians, Paul refers to hardships in his ministry in Asia, specifically Ephesus (1 Corinthians 4:9-13; 15:32; 2 Corinthians 1:8; 4:8-12; 6:4-5; 11:23-25). However, the multiple imprisonments Paul mentions are not fully reflected in Luke’s account of Paul’s ministry — Luke only records a…
After all these months pondering integration, I have come to the point of believing that the dynamic of integration just is the real at its heart. Everything that is real or comes to be real is a dynamo of integrative coherence. I also believe it is true that the real…
Have you heard of Tom Holland? Not the young Tom Holland of Spiderman fame. No doubt you’ve heard of him. I’m referring to the middle age Oxford-trained historian who recently wrote Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind . (Both Hollands are British, so you’ll be forgiven for confusing them.)…
This article was originally published in 1990. (The essay that follows concerns a rather touchy subject: how the Lord’s Supper is to be done. I am not writing to insult or offend, but to challenge. To that end I have not "held back" but have "gone ahead" and said what…
This article was originally published in 1990. In Genesis One, God told Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on…
On several occasions the gospels record Jesus teaching that only a few will be saved (Matthew 7:14, Matthew 22:14, and Luke 13:23). Careful readers of Scripture should begin to wrestle with how these passages found in the gospels fit together with other passages that teach that many will be saved…
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In his TLS review of Kathryn Walls’s study of the symbolism of Una in Spenser’s Faerie Queene ( God’s Only Daughter ), Bart van Es compares Walls’s book to that of John Dixon, a sixteenth century farmer who annotated his copy of Spenser: “Like Dixon, Walls takes the Bible and…
When John enters heaven (Revelation 4), He sees the Enthronement as a precious stone, a stone glowing with light, a stone that sparkles like a star, and He is surrounded with a rainbow that is also described as a precious stone. Specifically, the stone is the emerald. This is the…
In his Caused to Believe , William Bonney follows up suggestions from Charles Giblin regarding the structure of John’s prologue and the structural connections between the prologue and the gospel. Giblin finds what he calls an X-Y pattern in the prologue: “The X of this pattern encompasses verses 1–13. The…
In the latest issue of the International Journal of Systematic Theology , the redoubtable and hyper-productive Matthew Levering probes Augustine’s arguments (in de Trinitate ) for concluding that the Spirit is “love” and “gift.” As Levering points out, the identifications are not straightforwardly asserted anywhere in Scripture, yet Augustine makes…
God’s throne in heaven, like Sinai, flashes with lightning, crashes with thunder (Revelation 4:5). Those throne phenomena are repeated at crucial seams in the book of Revelation, with additions. After the seventh seal, an angel throws fire to earth, which reproduces the heavenly throne on earth (8:5)—thunder, sounds, lightning, with…
Christians walk into church through a door. All of them can come in. There’s no restricted access. Inside, there’s a lectern with a Bible, a table with food, a pastor in white. In some churches, the aroma of incense fills the air. It’s the holy place; in fact, the most…
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