Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The god of Israel was not just any god. Two thousand years of Christian history, with it’s besetting philosophical temptations, and full-blown deist and transcendentalist and universalist problems, have obscured the fact that, in itself, the identity of the true god (or gods) cannot be predetermined, any more than the…
Jacob and Solomon God gave wealth and possessions to Jacob, and then threatened to take them all away at Peniel. Jacob wrestled with God, and through prayer Jacob saw through the crisis by faith and was made victor (Hosea 12:4). The Kingdom period in Israel concerns the same themes. We…
In our study of the historical impact and unfolding of the Ten Words of God, we now arrive at the Third Word. The Third Word prohibits hypocrisy, and when we realize this, we can see right away that disobeying the Third Word is closely tied to the situation of Israel…
Abraham and Joshua In our previous two essays, we considered aspects of the lives of Abraham and Jacob, as these display how God works with men in history. These two men carry in themselves all the future of Israel, so to speak, and their lives at the individual level correspond…
Part 5: Laying New Foundations in a Dying World (continued) Physical Training Though it is seldom recognized any more, the fact is that no liberal arts and no science is possible apart from peace, and peace is only possible if there is a strong military presence that protects a nation.…
Last month, in our essay " Patriarchal Dominion ," we observed the flow from Abraham to Jacob to Joseph. Our concern here is to advance our understanding of that narrative flow. I should mention that I am assuming much that is found in my book Primeval Saints: Studies in the…
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Malcolm Moore reports this morning in the London Telegraph on Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit to the tomb of St. Francis, and Gorbachev’s public confession of Christian faith. Moore writes in part: “Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Communist leader of the Soviet Union, has acknowledged his Christian faith for the first time, paying…
John Ciardi writes ( How Does A Poem Mean? ) about poets who delight in hiding away meanings, often etymological, in the words they use: “they do not insist that every reader respond to them; it is enough that such touches delight the writer and are ready to delight the…
With papyrological evidence, there’s some grounds for saying that there’s considerable overlap between the vocabulary and syntax of NT Greek and “street Greek.” Barr, though, thinks the same about Hebrew: “In Israel at any rate much of the biblical language is unspecialized, for the religious structure is roughly coincident with…
James Barr directs most of his critical and rhetorical power at Kittel, but he’s got some criticisms of Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich too. Specifically, BAG “is too content to give semantic indications which presuppose, and are intelligible only in terms of, a more modern intellectual and cultural Weltanschauung than that…
James Barr is a famous enemy of “illegitimate totality transfer,” but he freely acknowledges that there’s a proper kind of totality. Using the word “ekklesia,” he lists some NT statements about the church (the church is body of Christ, bride, first installment of kingdom, etc.), and says that “the ‘meaning…
Drudge has a full transcript of Obama’s speech concerning race, which includes this statement about his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, that impressively combines sharp criticism with affection for Wright and his church: “I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some,…
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