Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I mentioned last month ( BH 82) in my essay "Like a Dove" that Genesis 8 is a recapitulation of Genesis 1. Let me explicate that assertion here. Of course, the world after the Flood is a new creation, so we may expect a recapitulation of the first creation. It…
The book of Esther is one of the most neglected of the books of the Bible. To be sure, sermons are preached on it, and commentaries have occasionally been written on it, but almost without exception Esther has been interpreted in isolation from the rest of Biblical history, chronology, and…
Dear Mr. ______, . . . Here is how I look at the geocentricity question. Since I don’t recall what I wrote you before, I may be repeating some things. 1. The Bible does not teach it. Biblical passages used to support the idea are being misinterpreted. My original paper…
Answer 4 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is often taken as a magnificent answer to the question, "What is God?" It reads: "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." Presbyterians are fond of praising this statement, preaching on it,…
The gospels tell us that at Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him "in bodily form like a dove" (Luke 3:22 & parallels). Biblically sensitive commentators have associated this event with three Old Testament parallels: (1) the hovering of the Spirit over the creation in Genesis 1:2; (2) the…
This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. (John 8:6) The story of the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:11) has been part of the canonical Christian Bible from its earliest…
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In a review of several books on Henry Miller for the TLS , Karl Orend highlights Miller’s religiosity and his sense of religious mission. He “was Buddhist for most of his life,” and considered his task to be a continuation of Whitman’s plant “to write new Bibles for our times.”…
The Economist (August 30) reports on research by a team from the University of Duisburg-Essen on animal magnetism - not animal charisma, but animals responding to the magnetic polarities of the earth. Studying pictures from Google Earth, they “concluded that cattle do generally align themselves in a north-south direction. Moreover,…
Jenson’s discussion of the “Being of the One God” at the end of the first volume of his Systematic theology is intriguing both as historical and as systematic theology. He summarizes the Greek answer to the question “What is Being” in three steps. Being is “immunity to time”; it is…
Mark 8:7 says that Jesus “blessed” the fish before distributing them to the 4000. As my colleague Toby Sumpter points out, this is the verb of the sea creatures in Gen 1:27, where Yahweh tells them to be fruitful and multiply. Jesus too, the Creator incarnate, blesses fish to multiply…
INTRODUCTION As Jesus and His three disciples descend from the mountain, they find the other disciples struggling to help a demon-possessed boy. The disciples fail. Jesus is the greater Elisha, and His disciples are like Elisha’s bumbling sidekick, Gehazi. They still lack even a mustard seed of faith (v. 20).…
Jesus told Peter, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself.” Self-denial is a basic demand of discipleship. We can’t follow Jesus if we don’t do it. Jesus is not talking about afflicting our bodies with fasting and flagellation, but about something more fundamental. Self-denial means giving…
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