Abstract Biblical scholars of the Old Testament have long upheld that YHWH is a “hidden God.” In fact, the hiddenness of God finds robust expression in the book of Ecclesiastes, where the concept seems to frame the very idea of God. Yet Karl Barth famously opposed Luther’s Deus absconditus, whose existence suggested a God “behind the back” of Jesus. If Barth is right that YHWH is no Deus absconditus, what then of Qohelet’s claim that divine hiddenness is an essential theological affirmation? The goal of this article is to examine how Barth’s discomfort with the Deus absconditus can be reconciled with the fact that divine hiddenness seems to frame Qoheleth’s theological perspective. On the side of systematics, we must determine what Barth says about hiddenness and the Deus absconditus: why, how, and to what degree he challenges the notion. As I shall argue, Barth’s complex theology of revelation exhibits a tension, both affirming a certain notion of God’s “hiddenness” and denying the Deus absconditus. On the biblical side, we must determine the nature and content of Qohelet’s God-talk. I will argue that many descriptions of the God-talk of Ecclesiastes are exaggerated and insensitive to Qohelet’s larger theological perspective. In the end, a more nuanced reading of both Barth and Qoheleth can bring these giants into conversation with one another and perhaps even clarify what is left ambiguous in Ecclesiastes’s theological assertions.

Abstract In this article, I argue that the classic rabbinic interpretation of the sin of Nadab and Abihu—that they “feasted their eyes upon the Shekinah”—has strong textual support in the biblical account itself (Lev 10:1–2), which contemporary biblical scholarship helps us to see. While some recent interpreters have argued that it is impossible to know what the brothers did wrong and that the story is intentionally ambiguous, I will argue that a solid theological interpretation is possible and that the rabbis were right when they claimed that the brothers were guilty of arrogance and greed. Furthermore, recent scholarship has made it clear that the closest theological parallel to the Nadab and Abihu event is the story of Adam and Eve. Putting these stories side-by-side, one discovers fascinating echoes between them, which helps us to better understand the sin of the priestly brothers, as well as the sin of Adam and Eve, all of whom are fallen priests in garden sanctuaries. Given that both events occur at the beginning of creation (the first, the macrocosm, and the second, the microcosm), these sins have cosmic significance. By contemplating this reoccurring “original sin,” we also confront the mystery of humanity’s fallen condition and the need for redemption.

Abstract The theological argumentation and exhortation for endurance in Heb 6:13–20 involves a notion of divine simplicity in which God’s being is God’s own perfections. In Heb 6:13–20 the Lord’s self-oath from Gen 22:16 means that God is God’s own faithfulness, swearing an oath “by himself,” having “none greater by whom to swear” in order to guarantee an “unchangeable” promise to Abraham that has been eschatologically realized in the heavenly priesthood of the risen Messiah. The first part of this article sketches conversations past and present on the doctrine of divine simplicity, from historically influential traditions to recent proposals to retrieve, revise, or abandon simplicity. The second part develops a theological interpretation of Heb 6:13–20, comparing its reading of the Akedah with Philo of Alexandria’s On Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis 3.203–208. The third part indicates how a doctrine of simplicity informed by theological interpretation of Heb 6:13–20 contributes constructive resources for Christian hope.

Abstract In this essay, I draw attention to part of the Acts narrative that should be included in an investigation of Luke’s political stance but often gets left out: the narratives of Acts 4–5. Studies typically focus on Jesus’s trial before Pilate and Herod; Christian encounters with Roman officials in the diaspora (Philippi, Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth, and Ephesus); or Paul’s trials before Claudius Lysias, procurators, and King Agrippa II in Judea. Few give more than passing glances at these early chapters in Acts. The lacuna is, prima facie, reasonable: What, after all, does Christianity’s encounter with Jerusalem authorities have to do with Christianity’s encounter with Roman political authority? A historically textured investigation into the question, however, yields a much more complicated picture. From the time of Herod the Great till the outbreak of the Jewish war, high priests were appointed by Roman legates, prefects, and Herodian kings, and they played an important role in mediating imperial authority to the Jewish people. They thus served as representatives, in part, of the Roman state. The narratives of Acts 4–5 therefore constitute important evidence that should be included in an investigation into Luke’s theological politics because they describe Christianity’s repeated collision with the Roman-appointed priestly aristocracy. In the end, I argue that when these narratives are included, the critical volume of Luke’s theological politics becomes amplified appreciably, and the wider theological character of Luke’s political perspective comes into greater focus.

Abstract Interpreting the book of Revelation requires careful exegesis on its own, but exegetical issues multiply when one attempts to draw out its pneumatology. Through theological interpretation and pro-Nicene categories, this article will demonstrate one way to understand the book of Revelation’s contribution to an articulation of the Holy Spirit’s eternal procession.

Abstract This article contends that John portrays not only Jesus’s death but his entire progression to the Father (that is, his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension) sacrificially. Discussions of Jesus’s sacrifice in John have tended to focus on Jesus’s death. Such an emphasis on death, however, coheres neither with the way John presents Jesus’s crucifixion and ascension as a singular action nor with how most ancient persons understood ritual sacrifice. It is more likely that John and his ancient audiences would have been attuned to the sacrificial connotations not only of Jesus’s death but of his arrest, trial, burial, resurrection, and ascension. By adjusting the hermeneutical category of sacrifice to agree with ancient understandings of the ritual act and its instantiations on Yom Kippur and Passover, this article traces the sacrificial logic running through John’s passion and resurrection narratives. It then concludes by demonstrating the significant social and theological implications of Jesus’s sacrifice in the Gospel of John.

Abstract Too often in Christian circles, Levitical law is sidelined or ignored, with little attention given to the particular laws and rituals. In this article, it is argued that Leviticus is central to our proper understanding of God’s identity, particularly as displayed in the Gospel narratives. To achieve this understanding, the article proposes utilizing the epistemological framework of Michael Polanyi, whose work on knowing through participation is particularly apt for the ritual focus of Leviticus. To demonstrate the suitability of this hermeneutic, the basic tenets of Polanyi’s program are explained before applying it to the restrictions on menstruating women in Lev 15. Polanyi’s system suggests that discoveries expand upon existing knowledge and frameworks for seeing the world. With this in mind, the analysis of knowing God through Lev 15 is compared to Mark’s account of the hemorrhaging woman in Mark 5. It becomes clear that Levitical restrictions prepare both the hemorrhaging woman and the surrounding crowd to recognize Christ’s divine identity through the miracle of healing and removal of social and ritual isolation in the woman’s life. Thus, the law provides an initial framework for knowing God, which Christ eventually broadens by demonstrating God’s complete triumph over death. Finally, the article argues that participating in the rituals and overarching framework of Levitical law enables Israel to know God and provides a similar opportunity to readers of the text. Readers may participate, albeit at a distance, so they, too, may be formed to recognize God in Christ.

Abstract This experimental article is methodologically Christian, in the sense that it is structured as a Christian mimesis of how a scriptural saint cited Scripture. However, the choice of subject matter commits it to engaging with the post-Enlightenment secular context, and principles of exegetical, historical, and theological analysis anchor it within wider scholarly debates. Concretely, the article takes the scriptural portrayal of Tobit’s recognition of his own emotion in Scripture as a paradigm or type for one way of encountering Scripture today. The first part examines a vignette of Tobit remembering a scriptural text about grief at a moment when he experiences intense grief. The second, longer part explores the transition to the post-Enlightenment context by performing and interrogating an act of recognizing in Scripture an emotion that has only been theorized since the eighteenth century, namely “disgust,” which is “recognized” in the scriptural narrative of Eve’s temptation in Gen 3. The purpose of the mimetic reception and the scholarly interrogation of it is not to replicate or critique Tobit’s example, but to allow it to be inhabited in a way that can remain meaningful from a Christian perspective without closing our eyes to the real challenges of modernity and, lest it be forgotten, of being human. This is offered simply as one exhibit in a potentially capacious gallery of attempts to learn from the Scriptures and the saints how to inhabit Scripture in the modern world.

Abstract This article contends that a figural reading of Luke’s passion narrative, influenced by Barth’s account of vocation, offers a heuristic for discerning contemporary callings. The first part of this study examines Barth’s theology of vocation. For Barth, one’s vocation is a dialectic of the concrete circumstances of the disciple and the dynamic, event-like nature of the call itself. Together, a disciple’s vocation is primarily a form of witness to the Christ who calls. The article then deploys Barth’s account of vocation to inform a figural reading of Luke’s passion narrative. This reading generates a renewed perception of prevailing vocational forms in the present.

Abstract The book of Job apparently ends happily ever after, with the restoration of the protagonist’s family and fortune (42:7–17). Juxtaposed with the rest of the book, however, this epilogue may appear incongruent and deeply problematic. In light of that, this article argues that a double reading is warranted. On the one hand, the epilogue may be read with a hermeneutic of suspicion, which resists superficial worldviews and protests against injustice. This reading will unmask troubling features in the representation of Job’s God, Job’s restoration, and Job’s speech. On the other hand, though—and drawing on Paul Ricœur—the text can be approached with “second naivety.” The audience is thereby welcomed to inhabit the symbolic wholeness of the textual world. The text invites both these readings and does not adjudicate between them. By holding them in dialectic tension, both hermeneutics and theology are enriched.