Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
WHAT IS THE OT PRECURSOR OF THE NT OFFICE OF PASTOR? HOW DOES THE FORMER ILLUMINATE THE LATTER? The first problem to address is: how do we know that there is an office of pastor in the New Testament? 1 Perhaps the way the question is put may permit me…
[This essay was originally published in December, 1981, in The Biblical Educator , a publication of the Institute for Christian Economics, and again with slight revisions in Contra Mundum 7 (Spring, 1993). It is reprinted here as a supplement to my book Creation in Six Days .] In 1979, Dr.…
Anyone seeking to reverse the meaning of this promise needs to come to grips not only with the phrase "God was with the lad" later on, but also with Hagar’s response in 16:13. She worships Yahweh, putting her trust in Him and obeying Him. In fact, Hagar is at the…
Ishmael is the narrator of Melville’s fantasy-romance Moby Dick. Melville takes up the traditional view of Ishmael as a wayward son of Abraham, driven out solely because of the Divine "caprice" of election, an angry man with his hand raised against all other men. He is a fitting "anti-hero," or…
There were five cities at the center of the Canaanite culture in the circle of the Jordan, a place like the Garden of Eden, like the land of Egypt, before it became the Dead Sea at the destruction of the cities (Genesis 13:10). Genesis 14:2 tells us their names: Sodom,…
Meditations by James B. Jordan Genesis 19, the destruction of Sodom and the rescue of Lot, is part two of a story that begins in Genesis 18. These two chapters happen in one 24-hour period: noon and evening in Mamre, and midnight and daybreak in Sodom. God and two angels…
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Daniel Miller’s The Comfort of Things begins from the premise that our relationship to things is not opposed to relationship with people but rather that “the closer our relationships are with objects, the closer our relationship are with people.” Visiting the Clarke family at Christian (as summed up by the…
Joel Marcus has an intriguing article on the Markan crucifixion account in JBL (2006). He points out that Mark reserves the title “king” until chapter 15, where Jesus is called king six times. As in the other gospels, Mark presents the crucifixion as an exaltation. Old news, that. Where Marcus…
INTRODUCTION In this “divided kingdom” portion of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus sets out the way of life and the government for His church. THE TEXT “When they had come to Capernaum, those who received the temple tax came to Peter and said, ‘Does your Teacher not pay the temple tax?’ He…
Matthew 17:19-20: Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, Why could we not cast out the demon? Jesus said to them, Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain,…
Malachi 4:5-6: Behold I am going to send Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of Yahweh. And he will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land…
Jonathan Chait - no Bush-loving right-winger he - doesn’t at all like Naomi Klein’s popular Shock Doctrine . Her thesis is that Milton Friedman is the evil genius behind the history of global economics and politics in the last three decades. The idea is to disorient the public by “wars,…
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