Is There a Theology of Priesthood in the Bible?
The New Testament never refers to anyone in the church as being a “priest” except Christ. How then can there be a group of people who call…
The Bible: A Memoir
I identify myself as an individual across time…. And my doing this is an expression of the deep individuality that is part of the human condition –…
The Dream of Adventism and Other Really Good Ideas
“Rhetoric appears, finally, as a means by which the impulse of the soul to be ever moving is redeemed.” — Richard Weaver, The Ethics of Rhetoric …
Luke as Historian
The world of biblical analysis seems to have two poles in the public imagination. One popular, generally atheistic, and horribly ignorant: the gospels were written—this analysis goes—long…
Was the Apostle Paul Really the First Reformer?
Any student of New Testament studies will be familiar with the names F.C. Baur and J.B. Lightfoot. Baur was a nineteenth German-Hegelian theologian and biblical critic who…
Can the Rich Go to Heaven? A Lesson from Luke 18
Luke 18 opens with Jesus’s responding to his disciples’ discouragement in the face of life’s hardships. Jesus proposes a parable indicating that the question we should ask…
The Good Samaritan: A Phenomenological Sermon
Who has not heard of Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan, from Luke 10? Who has not been told that the parable calls us to love our…
Continuity, Symbolism, and the Logos in the Prologue of the Gospel of John
The opening prologue of the gospel of St. John is theologically rich, puzzling, and poetic, thereby imbuing it with rich symbolism and imagery. The declaration that “In…
Putting Order into History
Aviva Zornberg has written another of her inspired books about the Bible, this one suggestively titled, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis. Why read the Bible? …
The Problem of Interpretation
Here shall he hunt [this beast] through every city until he will have sent her back into the underworld there whence envy first dispatched her.[1] The problem…
A Prolegomena to Reading the New Testament: “Rhetoric, History, and Theology: Interpreting the New Testament”
Todd Still and Jason Myers, eds. Rhetoric, History, and Theology: Interpreting the New Testament. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2022. “Any scholar approaching the New Testament is confronted…
Paul the Apocalypticist: Jamie Davies’s “The Apocalyptic Paul”
Jamie Davies. The Apocalyptic Paul: Retrospect and Prospect. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022. “What does it mean to say that Paul was an ‘apocalyptic’ thinker?” The…
Irony and the Meaning of Human Existence: The Wisdom of Classical Irony
“I have never done it before—stepping out of the life into the Alongside and looking at oneself living as if one were not alive. Do they all…
Metanoia, Job, and Jesus Christ
The story of Job is at once ancient and immediate to us. Thousands of years divide us from the primaeval setting of this story, and yet we…
Passion and Exodus: The Real Story Behind Easter
Throughout the Christian world, except in Germanic-language countries, Easter is known as Passover. The Passover, of course, is a Jewish holy festival—it marks the deliverance of the…