Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Integrity seems to have two meanings. It can mean the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles. A man of integrity is a person of honour, rectitude and probity, truthful and trustworthy. Integrity also describes a state – the quality of being whole and undivided. If things are…
Get the Psalm 32 Translation here Psalm 32 is the first part of Ps. 32-33, ending with a call to praise that is answered by what follows. Ultimately the psalm needs to be considered as a whole, but what we call Psalm 32 does have its own structure and logic,…
You wouldn’t hit a man with glasses would ya? No, of course not. I’d hit him with a bat. In our culture of frivolity it is tempting for Christians to think that solemnity should be our defining attribute. The coarseness of the world impedes us from enjoying any sort of…
Taking a cue in my last post from early Christian apologetics, I suggested that if we wish to articulate and defend a doctrine of creation ex nihilo in contemporary theology, we would do well to offer a thick description of Yahweh’s divine monarchia (his sole rule or sovereignty). Rather than…
I’m not sure we really understand the insidiousness of unbelief. It is not merely to reject the gospel of Jesus, the existence of a Creator God, or to question biblical morality. At its core, unbelief is ingratitude, and by the very nature of this ingratitude, it must ultimately reject every…
Mark’s narrative of the baptism of Jesus is characteristically brief: “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him…
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After the flood, Noah builds an altar ( mizbeach ) offers ascension offerings ( ya’al ‘oloth ). It’s the first altar and the first ascension offering in biblical history (Genesis 8:20). Noah is the first king, the first to be given authority to shed human blood, the first to drink…
Leviticus 1:7-9 describes the arrangement of animal parts for an ‘olah , an “ascension” offering. It’s a double or triple layering of the animal: head, suet, and entrails-and-legs; or, as a double structure with the entrails and legs set off from head and suet by the water barrier. Mary Douglas…
The peace offering is the one offering that a worshiper eats from. It is the offering of the marriage feast. But that’s not the thing that gets emphasized in chapter 3. What gets emphasized instead is the fat . The word is used 12 times in the chapter. These are…
Mary Douglas ( Leviticus as Literature ) explains the connections between the qereb , the inner parts of the animal, and the inner sanctuary of the tabernacle: “The Bible locates the emotions and thought in the innermost parts of the body; the loins are wrung with remorse or grief; the…
David Janzen ( Social Meanings of Sacrifice ) follows other scholars in bringing attention to “the relation between sacrifice and the importance of order.” He cites Jon Levenson’s comment that God “acts like an Israelite priest in the act of separation ( hbdyl ) of the various categories of created…
In a recent issue of Review of Biblical Literature, Lars Kierspel offers this commend on Pentecostal theologian William Atkinson’s Baptism in the Spirit , a monograph on the debate about James Dunn’s Baptism in the Holy Spirit . He argues that Atkinson errs in detaching the gift of the Spirit…
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