Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Midwives are rarely mentioned in Scripture, but play a prominent role in the first chapter of Exodus. The word midwife is used seven times in verses 15-22, though it is used only twice elsewhere in the Old Testament. The reason, I think, is not merely that the midwives were heroic…
Leviathan (41:1-11) is the climax of the theophany, the culmination of the Lord’s speech. His final answer to Job’s injudicious charges against God’s justice. After hearing God rehearse the characteristics of Leviathan and His absolute power over him, Job instantly repents in dust and ashes. He confesses, "I know now…
Our purpose in this study is to lay out the chronology and history of the Kingdom of Judah from the reign of King Josiah to the completion of the exile of the Jews under Nebuchadnezzar, with particular attention to the events recorded in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The Empire of Assyria…
Protestants have always insisted that the sacraments bring no benefit without a response of faith, but this seems to undermine infant baptism, since infants do not appear to be able to exercise faith. Luther and Calvin held together their insistence on faith with infant baptism by claiming that infants can…
Traditional Presbyterian theologians regularly cite 1 Corinthians 11:28 as an argument against the practice of paedocommunion. Children must be able “to examine themselves” before they come to the table. Supposedly this text demands a certain level of intellectual capability as well as the capacity to engage in self-conscious introspection, both…
Yahweh’s two speeches at the end of the book of Job (38-41) should bring some closure to the book. The prologue has the whole cosmic order arrayed against the blameless and upright Job, "a man who feared God and shunned evil" (1:1, 8; 2:3). Yahweh’s capstone speeches affirm God’s absolute…
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The biographical essays in G. Wright Doyle’s Builders of the Chinese Church summarize the lives of nine key missionary figures in Chinese Christianity. Doyle apologizes early on for including only two Chinese leaders, Liang Fa and Xi Shengmo (Pastor Hsi). He is aware that many other Chinese nationals contributed to…
Writing at the Atlantic , Christopher Orr complains that American political satire collapses easily into the standard American genre, melodrama. He puts the British and American versions of House of Cards in the balance, and the latter comes up wanting: “Tonally . . . the two shows are like night…
The Economist reports that “”The number of Americans giving up their passports has shot up, from less than 1,000 a year in the late 2000s to a record 3,415 in 2014.” One of the main reasons has to do with aggressive efforts to collect taxes from Americans who earn money…
T homas Kidd and Barry Hankins, both of Baylor University, observe that the story of Baptists in America is by most accounts a success story: “Baptists, who command tens of millions of American adherents, including the largest Protestant denomination in America (the Southern Baptist Convention) and the largest African American…
As Mark Stoll pursued research on the history of American environmentalism, he discovered that “A huge proportion of the leaders of environmentalism during its mid-twentieth-century heyday were raised Presbyterian.” As late as the Progressive Era conservationism of 1900-1920, “Progressive conservationists were nearly all raised Presbyterian. The almost complete unanimity astonished…
Revelation 13:16 is the first use of the word “mark” ( charagma ). It is a different word from “seal” in chapter 7 ( sphragis ). The mark of the beast looks like a mark of life and power. Those who refuse to worship the image of the beast are…
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