Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If you’re a preacher looking for good commentaries on Ezra, you’ll struggle. Certainly to find ones that wrestle in good detail with the text. And certainly ones that don’t cost you an arm and a leg. There’s a good bit more for Nehemiah, which is odd, as the two are…
Quick thought experiment: try to pretend you’ve never read 1 John before. Read 1:1-6. Go ahead; I’ll wait. Now, on to v. 7: “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with ______….” What word would you expect in that blank, based…
In my work as a Bible translator, I was recently checking our translation team’s draft of Genesis 8:8, which says of Noah (translating the Hebrew quite literally): And he sent out the dove from with him to see: had the waters lessened from upon the face of the ground? Part…
Just in case a reader may not know Weinberg, he is a theoretical physicist and the winner of the Nobel prize in physics in 1979, as well as countless other prizes for his research. He is also a prolific, lucid, and captivating writer. If you want to read something on…
Colossians 1:15-20 is a famous passage in Paul’s epistles because it is a succinct and powerful poem. It appears even to have been a hymn. Given the uniquely Pauline language — “reconciliation” is a term used only by Paul — it should not seem odd to attribute the poem/hymn to…
Stalker (1979) is a film by Andrei Tarkovsky based on Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. It shows a day from the life of a stalker, a man who enters the so-called "Zone", an Alien landing site, where he leads people to a room that grants people’s innermost desires, which…
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INTRODUCTION This section of Proverbs 11 highlights several issues. The first two verses treat issues of honesty and dishonesty; verses 3-8 describe the security of the righteous. Verses 9-14 return to various concerns regarding the use of the tongue, which was a theme of the previous chapter. HONESTY AND HUMILITY…
INTRODUCTION Proverbs 10 begins a long central section of Proverbs. This is largely a collection of sayings, labeled “The Proverbs of Solomon” in 10:1. The organization is not random, but it is not obvious. At least one can discern topical categories in this section: speech, wealth, expectations for the future.…
STRUCTURE This chapter is divided into three main sections, of which we’ll look at the first two. Verses 1-12 form a section that is marked off by the reference to the father-son relationship at the beginning and end (vv. 1, 12). Within this section, Solomon gives a series of six…
Locke is especially worried about Roman Catholicism, since Catholics hold “religious” opinions that are politically dangerous. But Protestants can help: “if restraint of the papists do not lessen the number of our enemies in bringing any of them over to us, yet it increases the number, and it strengthens the…
In an aside in his Essay , Locke notes that the “welfare of the kingdom” consists in “riches and power.” LInking this with the previous post: Religious opinions are not tolerated if the state is endangered; the state exists to promote wealth and power. Would Amos survive in a Lockean…
Locke asserts in his Essay on Toleration that since “speculative opinions and religious worship” have “no direct influence upon men’s lives in society,” these matters have “a clear title to universal toleration, which the magistrate ought not to entrench on.” But of course there’s absolute and then there’s absolute. Believers…
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