Is the Bible Pro-Slavery?

“The Bible is pro-slavery.” This is a common charge these days. It is a part of the New Atheist attack on religion, and it also comes from various progressive circles to defend certain social views...

Is “Consistent Preterism” Really Consistent?

Our church is working through I and II Thessalonians, and I recently had the privilege of preaching on II Thessalonians 2:1-12, which is the passage about the infamous “man of lawlessness” whom most people identify...

Five Strategies for Daily Bible Reading

I’ve always been amazed by Jesus’ response to Satan’s first temptation: “if you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread” (Matthew 4:3). I picture Jesus there, looking at the...

What Kind of a Thing is the Bible? 6 Theses

Sometimes it’s helpful to state the obvious—to step back and remind ourselves of the forest so that we don’t get lost in all the trees. Within academia, hyper-specialization and the tyranny of the pedantic often...

Nehemiah, Rebuilding, Shame, and Joy

Enoch and the Afterlife

It is very common to hear the claim in biblical scholarship that there is no doctrine of the afterlife in the Pentateuch, that the afterlife is a later idea that evolved throughout the Old Testament...

Some Thoughts on Noah

I know I’m a bit late, and Christians have already reviewed the recent film Noah to death, but I can’t help but share a few thoughts of my own after watching it last night. In...

Thoughts on the Theological Interpretation of Scripture

My most recent PhD seminar was called Biblical Theology and Theological Hermeneutics. The seminar focused on the “theological interpretation of Scripture” (hereafter TIS), an influential but difficult-to-define movement in contemporary biblical hermeneutics. I really enjoyed...

The Book of Revelation

At some point after my doctorate, I would like to make studying the book of Revelation one of my life projects. It coheres with some of my other interests, like the doctrine of heaven, and...