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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Colossians 1:22-23: He has reconciled you in His fleshly body . . . if you continue in faith firmly established and steadfast. Calvin once said the way you begin the Christian life isn’t very important. The big issue is not how you got started. The big issue is whether you…
“It is finished,” Jesus announced. That doesn’t mean His death ends suffering. His pain gives meaning to ours. He suffered so we can suffer with Him and in Him. Jesus didn’t suffer so we can endure afflictions. He suffered so we can rejoice in afflictions, because for those of us…
Geertz ( The Interpretation Of Cultures (Basic Books Classics) ) has some insightful things to say about interpretation. “A good interpretation of anything,” he says, “takes us to the heart of that of which it is the interpretation. When it does not do that, but leads us instead somewhere else…
In his famous essay on “thick description” ( The Interpretation Of Cultures (Basic Books Classics) ), Clifford Geertz argues that anthropology is not about becoming native but learning “to converse with them, a matter a great deal more difficult, and not only with strangers, than is commonly recognized” (13). Its…
In the past, writes Rosemary Reuther in Faith and Fratricide (48-49), it’s been common to distinguish sharply between messianic Judaism and the “acute Hellenism” of Jewish apocalypticism and gnosticism. Reuther doesn’t think that works: “apocalyptic and Gnostic modes of thinking” become evident between the first and third centuries AD not…
The description of the work of the two witnesses (Revelation 11:5-6) is carefully arranged. The verses are framed by the verb thelo , “desire.” Their enemies desire harm (v. 5); they respond with plagues and judgments whenever they desire (v. 6). Verse 5 describes the fiery justice against those who…
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