Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The preceding essay has caused me to consider the possibility that the life of Abraham as recounted in Genesis contains a typological prophecy of the history of Israel; that is, that the events in Abraham’s life broadly anticipate events in Israel’s history. This kind of pattern is seen in the…
by: Jeff Meyers and James Jordan In the fifth chapter of John’s gospel we read of a man who had been ill for 38 years and who was lying by a pool located by the Sheep Gate of Jerusalem. This sheep waited, as did many other infirm people, for an…
What had been reduced to ruin by this sex, would by the selfsame sex be recovered to salvation. As Eve believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel. The delinquency which the one occasioned by believing, the other by believing effaced. —Tertullian What is Paul saying about women and salvation…
Back in Biblical Horizons 132 I discussed the horrible abuse of the converted men of Salem/Shechem in Genesis 34. These Hivites had joined the covenant by circumcision and then were slaughtered by Simeon and Levi. That, however, is not the end of their story. In Joshua 9 we find the…
Genesis 14:14 says that Abram mustered his trained men, “born in his house,” to rescue Lot, and gives their number as 318. It is clear that the precise number is provided for some reason, but what is it? S. Gevirtz notes that 318 is the sum of all the prime…
Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. (John 21:11) This is one of those texts in the Bible that many people puzzle over. It is not a puzzle…
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O’Donovan again, asking, What makes “public reason” reasonable? He states the premise that “rational communication is directed to ‘persuasion’ broadly understood, that is to say, it is concerned with communicating reasons for acting, reasons for believing.” These persuasions are nourished within a tradition, but, he insists, they are not “confined…
O’Donovan continues his article by asking in what sense pluralism’s public reason is public. Public and private necessitate one another, and “the private is defined negatively, by privation . . . by walling off, excluding, refusing entry. Private thought, domestic privacy, property, private association, and so on are those withheld…
In a 2008 essay in The Princeton Seminary Bulletin (since reprinted elsewhere), Oliver O’Donovan offers “Reflections on Pluralism.” He wonders at the outset why we add an “ism” to the word, and suggests that understanding “difference as plurality” reflects an anxiety about difference. Not all difference creates anxiety, but only…
1 Kings 10: When the queen of Sheba perceived the wisdom of Solomon, the house he had built, the food of his table, the seating of his servants, the attendance of his waiters and their attire, his cupbearers, there was no more spirit in her. As Pastor Sumpter has said,…
Paul preaches “the mystery.” He wants the Colossians to be fully assured of the mystery. He is imprisoned because of the mystery. “The mystery” is the key to everything, concealed for a time but now revealed. The union of Jews and Gentiles was veiled in the Old Testament, now everyone…
Cur Deus Homo is typically viewed as the classic statement of the “satisfaction” theory of atonement. I think the accent of Anselm’s argument lies elsewhere. To be sure, satisfactio is a central term and satisfaction a central concept in the treatise. Anselm seems to use the term in much the…
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