Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A couple of decades ago, when I was a young Reconstructionist (instead of a middle-aged post-Reconstructionist), I coined the phrase "political polytheism" to describe how modern evangelical Christians approach matters of social law and politics. Christians want the Bible for Church and family life, but turn to other gods for…
Gary North has from time to time taken note of some of the differences between contracts and covenants. For him, one of the most important is the oath-character of a covenant. Naturally, the English terms "contract" and "covenant" can be used with varying nuances by different writers, and their zone…
The Book of Chronicles is the last book in the Hebrew Canon of the Old Testament. The word "canon" means "authoritative list" when used in connection with the Bible. What we call the Hebrew Canon consists of 24 books arranged in three major divisions: the Law, the Prophets, and the…
by: Peter Leithart and James Jordan The Book of Kings is structured chiastically, or concentrically. To see this clearly, we start in the middle and work our way outward. 2 Kings 3–7 record the central events of the ministry of Elisha. Elisha makes his first appearance in 1 Kings 19:19-21,…
(The following is a supplement to my book, God’s War Against Humanism , a study of the book of Judges, available from Biblical Horizons for $20.00 – a photocopy of the original book, which is now out of print). The turning point in the book of Judges is 8:22-28. Here…
From time to time I am asked how I think the Lord’s Supper should be done. This essay is my response to that question. To start with, we should agree that the Lord’s Supper is the only ritual we are obligated to do in the New Covenant on a routine…
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In The Empty Men , his study of the heroic theme in the Bible, Gregory Mobley catalogs some of the odd weapons used by biblical warriors: “In Judges and 1 Samuel, the relative inferiority of the weapons of the biblical heroes is emphasized. Shamgar ben Anat is lauded for killing…
I have a great deal of sympathy with Jose Miranda’s claim (in Marx and the Bible ) that Paul is writing about justice in Romans, and that the apostles is concerned “with the problem of society . . . of human civilization. His anguish is over the injustice which reigns…
John Dunnill ( Body and Sacrifice , 128-9) argues that for Paul baptism is more than a “sign” of the new age: “For him, resurrection is the actual transformation of the mortal body of Jesus, the reversal of the deathward trend established by Adam: not merely the resuscitation of a…
In some ways, Daniel Ullucci’s The Christian Rejection of Animal Sacrifice helpfully complicates our picture of views on ancient sacrifice, both pre-Christian and Christian. He challenges the standard narrative that claims that Christians straightforwardly and pretty much immediately recognized Jesus’ death as a final sacrifice, and pretty much immediately abandoned…
In a recent article in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion , Natalie Gummer lays out the sacrificial cosmology embodied in early Buddhist texts. The premise is that the world is a kitchen, in which things take the forms of ingredients in a cosmic stew - saps, juices,…
In his monograph on Israel’s Tabernacle as Social Space , Mark George makes the observation that tabernacle space is “configured horizontally”: “There is not a single step, platform, or dais in tabernacle space. No steps differentiate court space from common space, holy space from court space, or most holy space…
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