Dotting the landscape of eastern Virginia are historic churches with churchyards containing the mortal remains of their people. Epitaphs and funerary inscriptions abound in these cemeteries, and they offer a look into a variety of societal, economic, historic, and religious lives and times of the people they represent. During the colonial period (1607-1783), it was … Read more
Soon after his conversion, J.I. Packer became acquainted with Keswick theology through his involvement in the Inter-Collegiate Christian Union. The central theme of Keswick thinking is the promise of a deeper spiritual life: complete deliverance from sin and closeness to Christ. The teaching takes various forms, but its dominant theme is that Christians, in a … Read more
Matthew’s Eunuch’s: A Response to “Trans” Interpretations of Matthew 19:12 This paper responds to interpretations of Jesus’ saying about eunuchs in Mt 19:12 arrived at through the lens of non-gender-conforming ideology. These interpretations seek to justify a non-binary theological anthropology, as opposed to traditional Christian sexual mores. This paper seeks to address three arguments of … Read more
This paper contends that the allegation that Jesus is possessed by Beelzebul in Mark 3:20–22 is not a baseless fabrication that Jesus’s opponents invented purely to discredit him. Although the claim that Jesus is possessed is undoubtedly false and is motivated in part by his opponents’ desire to undermine his ministry, their diagnosis is based … Read more
This essay argues that the short parable in John 16:21 is a double entendre, referring not only to a woman’s child-bearing experience in general but also to a specific woman’s child-bearing experience—her hour [ἡ ὥρα αὐτῆς], foreshadowed in this parable and realized at the foot of the cross in chapter 19, where Jesus announces that … Read more
Called “the centerpiece of prophetic literature” (LaSor, Hubbard, Bus, 276) and “quoted, paraphrased, and alluded to more than any other Old Testament book” (Bosma, 17–18), it is no wonder the book of Isaiah has earned the title “Fifth Gospel” (Sawyer). Yet, for the noted significance within scripture and throughout church history, the preaching of the … Read more
This study explores the theological complexity of YHWH’s relationship with foreign kings and kingdoms in the Hebrew Bible, focusing on three primary models: defeat, support, and initial support followed by eventual punishment. While the first two are relatively straightforward, the third model undergoes significant development as Israel responds to imperial domination by Assyria and Babylon. … Read more
In the 2013 article “Summaries of Israel’s Story” (SIS) by Jason Hood and Matthew Emerson, a list of story summaries from Scripture and ancient literature was compiled. Chris Bruno, Jared Compton, and Kevin McFadden used the criteria of Hood and Emerson’s article to perform a book-length analysis on New Testament story summaries in 2020 called … Read more
Based on a chapter from a forthcoming book to be published by Cascade, this paper will focus on the essentials and earmarks of sermons that play out in a sacramental (encounter-enabling) manner. In the first half of the paper I outline what I consider to be the essentials of a theology of preaching that can … Read more
William Carey is widely regarded as the “Father of Modern Missions” for his pivotal role in establishing a movement that continues to shape global missions to this day. However, while Carey has garnered significant attention, the contributions of his fellow missionaries on the field have often been overlooked and only more so with the passing … Read more