Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Midwives are rarely mentioned in Scripture, but play a prominent role in the first chapter of Exodus. The word midwife is used seven times in verses 15-22, though it is used only twice elsewhere in the Old Testament. The reason, I think, is not merely that the midwives were heroic…
Leviathan (41:1-11) is the climax of the theophany, the culmination of the Lord’s speech. His final answer to Job’s injudicious charges against God’s justice. After hearing God rehearse the characteristics of Leviathan and His absolute power over him, Job instantly repents in dust and ashes. He confesses, "I know now…
Our purpose in this study is to lay out the chronology and history of the Kingdom of Judah from the reign of King Josiah to the completion of the exile of the Jews under Nebuchadnezzar, with particular attention to the events recorded in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The Empire of Assyria…
Protestants have always insisted that the sacraments bring no benefit without a response of faith, but this seems to undermine infant baptism, since infants do not appear to be able to exercise faith. Luther and Calvin held together their insistence on faith with infant baptism by claiming that infants can…
Traditional Presbyterian theologians regularly cite 1 Corinthians 11:28 as an argument against the practice of paedocommunion. Children must be able “to examine themselves” before they come to the table. Supposedly this text demands a certain level of intellectual capability as well as the capacity to engage in self-conscious introspection, both…
Yahweh’s two speeches at the end of the book of Job (38-41) should bring some closure to the book. The prologue has the whole cosmic order arrayed against the blameless and upright Job, "a man who feared God and shunned evil" (1:1, 8; 2:3). Yahweh’s capstone speeches affirm God’s absolute…
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Writing in the 1610s, William Barclay pointed to the astonishing paradoxical benefits of smoking: “Tobacco is hote, because it hath acrimonie; yet, it is cold because it is narcoticke and stupefactiue, it maketh drunken, and refresheth, it maketh hungrie and filleth, it maketh thirstie and quencheth thirst. Finalie, to bring…
Michael D. Hurley has a fine review of Nicholas Boyle’s Sacred and Secular Scriptures: A Catholic Approach to Literature in the Feb 11 issue of TLS . While Boyle contests the efforts of Herder and Schleiermacher to reduce “Word to word,” he still emphasizes the continuity between the Bible and…
Jesus came to fulfill the law. Jesus consistently flouted the ceremonial laws of cleanliness. How can we put these two statements together? Perhaps the “uncleanness” laws are misnamed. The intention of the laws is not to invent new ways to be estranged and exiled from God. The heart of the…
A student perceptively suggests that first-century Jews had become so attached to waiting for the Messiah that they could not bring themselves to acknowledge the fulfillment of their hopes. Against all that the prophets had taught, they had become tragic, and unfulfilled longings had become (and still remain) the essence…
God has enemies. You need only pick up the Psalter to discover this. ?The enemies of Yahweh will be like the glory of the pastures, they vanish ?Elike smoke they vanish away?E(Psalm 37). ?Because of the greatness of Your power Your enemies will give feigned obedience to You?E(Ps 66). ?Let…
Part 1: Dionysus against the Crucified. Section 1: City and the Wastes. Hart raises the question, What is postmodernism? And he answers by citing Milbank?s claim that postmodern French philosophers, for all their differences, are united in an ?ontology of violence.?EBeginning from a radical historicism and perspectivism, postmodernists move to…
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