Latest Posts
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Rule of the Community, the Prophet, and the Two Messiahs
Read more: Rule of the Community, the Prophet, and the Two MessiahsIn the Qumran text Rule of the Community it states, “They shall be judged by the first judgements in which the men of the Community began to be instructed, until the coming of the prophet and the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel” (1QS 9.10–11).1 We have here “the locus classicus for Qumran messianism.”2 Although this…
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Jesus Is Coming Soon
Read more: Jesus Is Coming SoonJesus is coming soon. This is the Bible’s continual answer to the question of when our Lord will return to judge the wicked and vindicate the righteous. The Book of Revelation is part of an apocalyptic tradition that followed the exile of the Jewish people. Apocalyptic literature is often political in its form and theological…
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DuPriest: “Christian Unity begins in Friendship”
Read more: DuPriest: “Christian Unity begins in Friendship”In 1985, drawing heavily both from Jeremy Taylor’s “Discourse on Friendship” and his own personal experience, the Episcopalian English professor, Travis DuPriest, argued that “Christian unity begins in friendship.” Why is this worth knowing? For one thing, it’s happening. For another, it is true to who we are, both as humans and as humans united…
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Is “Bible” a Secular Term?
Read more: Is “Bible” a Secular Term?This summer, America celebrated her 240th birthday. The Fourth of July has always been one of my favorite holidays, mostly because I love any excuse to eat my weight in watermelon and watch things explode, but this summer I spent most of the month of July in England. All “America-as-the-original-Brexit” jokes aside, I found it…
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Domesticated Jesus and Highlighter Christianity
Read more: Domesticated Jesus and Highlighter ChristianityLesslie Newbigin tells an illuminating story about his time as a foreign missionary to India. In the Hindu Ramakrishna monastery, there is a gallery of portraits of the great religious teachers of humankind. Among them is a portrait of Jesus at which worship is offered every Christmas Day. Lest anyone mistake this worship for a…
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The Cursed Child: A Rantastic Review
Read more: The Cursed Child: A Rantastic ReviewOkay, so I have not had nearly enough conversations about The Cursed Child. I really really need to vent about this story but I’ve just not had any opportunities. So instead of bottling it all up, I need to get a few more things off my chest about this story. A few weeks ago I…
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Do You Know Why You Go To Church?
Read more: Do You Know Why You Go To Church?What is the local church? Not physically so much, but what is the point? I asked this question for years ever since I started going consistently of my own volition in my senior year of high-school. I really only went because I had friends there, and occasionally I’d hear an interesting point about some passage…
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Excising the Experts
Read more: Excising the ExpertsThe Root Issue: Failure to Listen In my previous blog post, The Art of Listening, I discussed the important and wise lesson behind one of my favorite biblical versus—Proverbs 18:13: “He who gives an answer before he hears, it is folly and shame to him” (NASB). If you have not already done so, I highly…
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The Divisiveness of Jesus
Read more: The Divisiveness of Jesus“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” In our world and in our current political climate,…
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A Case for the Case for the Faith
Read more: A Case for the Case for the FaithAfter studying under Biola’s apologetics program and then becoming a theology major there, I have felt the tension between the two fields. Apologetics sounds like theology but really feels like philosophy, whereas theology typically doesn’t sound or feel like either. After wondering whether my years of apologetics training were actually fruitless attempts to create an…