The Parables
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, […]
Recovering the Message of Scripture In this special section of our "Rightly Dividing the Word" issue, nine pastor-theologians help shed light on some popular texts of Scripture that tend to lose their true redemptive-historical significance in a culture of interpretive narcissism. When I heard the news on New York City's WFAN that Michael Jordan was […]
Recovering the Message of Scripture In this special section of our "Rightly Dividing the Word" issue, nine pastor-theologians help shed light on some popular texts of Scripture that tend to lose their true redemptive-historical significance in a culture of interpretive narcissism. Would you cross the street to help someone you didn't know? How about to […]
Nathan the Wise-Which One is the True Religion? is the title of a play written in 1778 by Gotthold Lessing (1729-81), an influential German writer of the Enlightenment era. Set in Jerusalem during the Third Crusade, with Christian crusaders threatening Muslim-controlled Palestine, the play has the Muslim leader Saladin asking Nathan the Wise which is […]
Eric R. Severson has collected for his readers 29 different authors' treatments of the sheep and goats parable from Matthew 25. These range from Saint Irenaeus in the second century to George Whitefield in the eighteenth. Each selection is followed by "reading questions" and bibliography. Sometimes the sheep and goats passage is central and sometimes […]