It has been a long time since I have so thoroughly enjoyed a theology book. Abraham’s book is written with verve and vitality. The prose simply sparkles. The mix of standard academic terminology with “bog Irish” and homespun Texan is delightful. The book is by turns both witty and worshipful, both convicting and fun. It…

Wolfgang Musculus’s (1497-1563) Christological interpretation of Psalm 114 demonstrates an interesting interpretive strategy. As the psalmist appropriates the exodus as a story of God’s deliverance within his own context, Musculus extends this hermeneutic and adopts the exodus as an illustration of God’s ultimate act of redemption through Christ. God’s People Always Have an Exit “When…

As with most Reformation commentators, Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560) finds Psalm 110 to be a prophesy about Christ’s eschatological kingdom. In his interpretation, he draws an interesting doctrinal inference, noting that Christ’s succession of David is different than earthly succession, pointing to the eternality of his roles as king and priest, which draw attention to his…

While our Reformation commentators readily found Christological meaning in the Psalms, whether typologically or more immediately, considerable care was nevertheless taken to understand the historical context of the text as well. In his interpretation of Psalm 98, English pastor and theologian John Downame (1571-1652) demonstrates this concern, as he sets forth both the historical and…

Reformed commentators tend to find Christ in the Psalms typologically, and that approach to the text is demonstrated in John Calvin’s (1509-1564) interpretation of Psalm 41:9. While Christ applied this text to Judas, Calvin finds a broader correspondence between David and Christ. David’s words concerning his own situation, Calvin argues, are representative of Christ, and…

When modern interpreters imagine the literal sense of Scripture, they tend to conceive it in terms of the historical, grammatical, and literary elements of the text. For sixteenth-century commentators, however, to observe this narrow definition would be to sever the letter of Scripture from the Spirit, its divine author. While Cardinal Cajetan’s (1469-1534) interpretation of…

For Martin Luther (1483-1546), as for most exegetes of the sixteenth century, the significance of the Psalms extends far beyond the historical events that occasioned their writing. While modern exegetes quibble over the extent of their prophetic meaning, in his preface to the Psalms, Luther shows no such hesitation. The Psalter, he states, is in…

Eberhard Jüngel’s most important and enduring contribution to the contemporary revival of interest in the doctrine of creation comes in the form of a demurral. Jüngel never produced a programmatic or even comprehensive statement on creation; the closest thing a late essay on “the creative power of the word” in the course of which he…

John Webster devoted a good portion of the first fifteen years of his career wrestling with the theology of Eberhard Jüngel. Research for his Cambridge dissertation, “Distinguishing between God and Man: Aspects of the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel” (1982), anticipated the magisterial Eberhard Jüngel: An Introduction to His Theology, which not only served as the first…

Whenever John Webster published one of his essays, it seemed you could hear from certain sectors of the theological academy the sound of theologians dropping everything. They wanted—we wanted—to make sure our hands were free so we could take up and read. For about two decades these essays arrived as something less authoritative and less…

In his commentary on John 3:14, Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560) explains the implications of Christ’s analogy between the Son of God and the bronze serpent. As the serpent symbolizing sin was raised up, so that sinners could gaze on it and be healed, so Christ took our sin onto himself, so that we could gaze on him…

In Africa’s new charismatic Christianity (what I previously referred to as contemporary Pentecostalism) prosperity in both its spiritual and material senses remains a major theme. This Christianity shares the supernatural worldview associated with traditional religion in which evil powers are held responsible for the problems that people face in life, including the failure to prosper materially. This much…