Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
1 Kings 17, which abruptly introduces Elijah into the history of the northern kingdom, is a carefully constructed literary unit. In its basic structure, it follows a clear exodus-return pattern. Like Jacob and his sons, Elijah was driven out of the land by a famine (vv. 1-4). In exile, Elijah…
Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, were listening to all these things and they were scoffing at Him. And He said to them, "You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is…
In the year 3119, Ahaziah of Judah and Jehoram of Israel were both slain by Jehu as he carried out his God-appointed task of eliminating the seed and house of Ahab (2 Kings 9:13-33). Since the kings of Israel are usually counted as beginning their reign in the same year…
One of the most important developments in Biblical studies in recent years has been a movement of scholars devoted to studying the literary techniques of the Biblical writers. Tremper Longman, III of Westminster Theological Seminary has treated this movement from a Reformed perspective in his Literary Approaches to Biblical Interpretation…
And because [Paul] was of the same trade, he stayed with [Aquila and Priscilla] and they were working; for by trade they were tentmakers (Acts 18:3). The fact that Paul was by trade a tentmaker has usually been taken as the springboard for a discussion of whether pastors should have…
I pointed out in Chronologies and Kings Part 9 that the years of Judah’s kings are given in chronological fashion. "When we read of a Judahite king’s reign as lasting 4 years, it means that 4 years of the chronology have been given to him, and there is no chronological…
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Wes Callihan writes, in response to my brief quotation from Lucretius: “Possibly, however, Lucretius wouldn’t consider the indifferent watcher from the porch outside Pompeii a true Epicurean. Doesn’t the very next line go on to say something about how the pleasure is *not* in the other person’s suffering but in…
Isaiah Berlin’s book on Hamann is lively engaging, but Berlin doesn’t get Hamann. For instance: “Hamann’s constantly repeated point is that revelation is direct contact between one spirit and another, God and ourselves.” Not. The opposite is the case: His constantly repeated point is that God speaks to the creature…
Book 2 of De rerum natura begins with “It is sweet on the great sea to watch from the shore other people drowning.” The words were found on a wall on a house in Pompeii. Perhaps someone sweetly watched from a perch opposite Vesuvius as the lava flow swallowed up…
Athanasius ties the Arians up in knots with an order-of-decrees argument. If the Son is created for the sake of creating us, then the Son exists for our need rather than we for His sake. That suggests a particular ordering of God’s will: “It is not that God, having the…
Athanasius says that “the words of human beings do not act.” Instead, “it is not by words but by hands that a human being works, for human hands have subsistence while words do not.” Hence, he is willing to adopt Irenaeus’s notion that the Son and Spirit are the two…
Athanasius ( Orations Against the Arians ) writes that “God is not like us.” This is in the context of explaining how the eternal Word differs from the ephemeral words of human beings, and how the divine Word actually does what it says: “the Word of God is not, as…
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