Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Christmas is a joyful season, but for many it turns into something else. Instead of joy, it is full of disappointment and unhappiness. Instead of an occasion for family fellowship, it becomes an opportunity for opening old wounds, reigniting old arguments, giving new life to rancor that should have died…
The Temple of Time The “covenant-literary matrix” of the Bible is not a pattern imposed upon the text, but the internal logic of its arrangement. This fundamental structure, functioning at multiple levels simultaneously, is a ceaseless reiteration of God’s primary theme. It is an algorithm forged in the furnace of…
In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Exodus, Solomon began to build the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. [1] That the author of Kings should date the start of the building of the temple from the Exodus is noteworthy. In Exodus 15:17, in Moses’ song following the…
Philip Schaff, a German Reformed theologian, states in The Principle of Protestantism that the material principle of Protestantism is “the doctrine of the justification of the sinner before God by the merit of Christ alone through faith.” This is the core message of the Church which leads “to the abandonment…
“Religion” is an attempt to create or build a tower with a top, or to build a temple that is self-contained. The story of The Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 is the story of mankind’s attempt to create a world that is self-contained and does not need God. All…
In the first essay in this series, I presented a case for dating Matthew before AD 70, contrary to the present scholarly consensus. In this essay, I intend to present cultural, personal, ecclesiological, and theological arguments for a very early date for Matthew. [1] The cultural argument concerns literacy in…
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In this section, I explore two biblical perspectives that throw light on the rise and persistence of Islam. First, Scripture indicates that the Lord judged Israel by raising up parodic versions of Israel to plague Israel. When Yahweh wanted to call Israel to repentance, He held up a pseudo-Israel as…
I wrote the following a few years ago, and have not been able to farm it out anywhere. Other parts to follow in subsequent posts to this site. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his…
INTRODUCTION Last week, we focused attention on the role of the Spirit in the incarnation, and what the incarnation told us about the relationships among the Father, Son, and Spirit. This week, we will focus attention on the Son or Word of the Father, who was sent into the world…
Much has been made by Jehovah’s Witnesses and other groups of the absence of the article in John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was A God,” is the preferred translation of such cults. There are good grammatical reasons to…
Much has been made by Jehovah’s Witnesses and other groups of the absence of the article in John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was A God,” is the preferred translation of such cults. There are good grammatical reasons to…
Walter Bruggemann ( An Introduction to the Old Testament , p. 206f) offers this intriguing discussion of Ezekiel 18. He notes that this has usually been taken as a universal statement about individual human responsibility, but that interpretation detaches the passage from its context. He suggests a contextually sensitive interpretation:…
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