Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Before considering the details of the Leviticus, we must have before us certain matters that have been established in Genesis and Exodus. These are things that we as Israelites already know when we first hear Moses report what God dictated to him in Leviticus. Adam Let us begin with Adam.…
(continued from issue 142) 2 “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘An adam, 1 when he brings near from you p a Nearbringing 2 to Yahweh, from livestock 3 from the herd and from the flock you p shall bring near your p Nearbringing. 4 2.…
Trying to Deal Honestly with Luke 10.25-37; 18.18-30; and Parallels When Christ enjoins upon the young man the duty of following him (Mt. 19:23), he does not give a counsel, but a command to all in common because no one can have a hope of salvation unless he follows Christ…
Initial Observations: How the Gospel Challenged the Pharisees In another paper , I argued that the “Law-Gospel” hermeneutic, as applied to Luke 10.25-37; 18.18-30, resulted in a fundamental misreading of the text. Thinking of the context of those passages in Luke’s Gospel has given me some further reflections on how…
I recently heard of a new English translation of the Bible being prepared by men concerned to preserve a literal word-for-word rendering of the Hebrew and Greek but also sensitive to ecclesiastical tradition. I wrote to the committee and asked if they were going to fix the traditional translation of…
All Christians struggle with sin. Many times even relatively mature Christians commit sins they thought they had long since left behind and end up struggling anew with sinful habits in thought, word, or deed. Naturally, this means they must rouse themselves to action in putting to death the deeds of…
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Motyl offers several responses to Ferguson’s advocacy of liberal empire as a way of spreading democratic institutions, capitalist economies, freedom, and Western culture. First, he notes that liberal empires that promote free trade and democracy might be tied to a particular historical moment: “it is an unwarranted leap in logic…
Alexander Motyl attempts to discern the definition of empire implicit in Niall Ferguson’s Empire : “ As Ferguson does not even bother to define the concept, at most we can surmise from his discussion of British and American power that empire entails ‘actually ruling a colony’ by means of ‘colonial…
INTRODUCTION Jesus’ curses against the scribes and Pharisees climax in a lament over the doomed city of Jerusalem . He has tried to gather her to Himself, but she has refused. Like Yahweh in the days of Ezekiel (chs. 8-11), Jesus abandons the temple (Matthew 24:1). THE TEXT “Woe to…
James says that true religion consists in “visiting widows and orphans in their distress” (James 1:27). We don’t get the point if we think of “visit” in our first sense of “pay a call.” In Christ, God has “visited and redeemed His people” (Luke 1:68), and the dayspring from on…
Nathan Kerr ( Christ, History, Apocalyptic ) explains Yoder’s notion of Jesus’ “independence” by saying that Jesus “lives, concretely and in history, a life-story that is entirely free from and irreducible to any pre-given ‘historical’ coordinates, any general or ‘meta’ principle that might serve to range the complexities and contingencies…
Jesus’ image of the Pharisees as “white-washed graves” is multi-dimensional. First, there is the obvious contrast between the apparently pure outside (white) and the inside (bones and uncleanness). In context, the Pharisees have become filled with corpses by devouring other Jews. They are cannibals, insatiable as the grave. Second, as…
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