Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Failure of the Church Yet a third factor played an important role in this historical development, in addition to the imperial adoption of icons and the rise of the icons of the holy man. Brown writes: "The great Christian basilicas of the previous centuries tended to stand empty, except…
The three large patriarchal narratives of Genesis concern the three aspects of the cosmos: matter, space, and time. Over these three is man given dominion. Lucifer was originally appointed to train man in this dominion, but he chose to lead man into rebellion instead. Thus, the Angel of Yahweh replaced…
Part 6: Living in a Dying World (continued) The "Trivium" (continued) The five stages of education are simply the five stages of the covenant as God administers it in human life and history, and in the liturgy of covenant renewal: First, God announces Himself. "I am Yahweh Your God." He…
The following essay is tentative and exploratory, offered for your consideration. It seems to me that the ritual of the Ascension Offering (incorrectly translated as Burnt Offering) of Leviticus 1 is a symbolic recapitulation of Genesis 1, which thereby portrays the sacrificial ritual as way of moving from a fallen…
Just as the vast majority of evangelical Christians in America today are Arminian and Baptist, so the vast majority do not believe in a creation around 4000 BC. I don’t expect any of these three situations to change anytime soon. Powerful presuppositions are at work in all three instances, along…
The Iconoclastic Controversy Continuing Pagan Influence How did images creep in? To begin with, there was in the post-Constantinian Church a concerted effort on the part of the semi-pagans to interpret Christianity in essentially pantheistic terms. The heretics put God and man on a continuum of "being," so that God…
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We have some difficulty understanding the biblical picture of prayer because we live in a country that sharply separates politics and prayer. Ancient Israel did not do that. The dedication ceremony for the temple began with the transport of the ark of the covenant from its location in the ?city…
As I’ve discussed in a previous post (and, more fully, in a forthcoming article in the Tyndale Bulletin ), Kings is organized by three parallel narratives: the story of the united kingdom (Solomon to Zedekiah and Jehoiachin); the northern kingdom (Jeroboam to the fall of Samaria and the destruction of…
I read from Genesis 2:21-23 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh at that place. And the Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken…
Throughout the OT, there are repeated references to Yahweh’s “name” dwelling in the place of Yahweh’s choosing (Deut 12; 2 Sam 7; 1 Kings 6-8). Frequently (as in 1 Kings 8:16), there is a pun on the word “name” (SHEM) and the word “there” (SHAM). If we can extrapolate from…
1 Kings 8:12-13 begins Solomon’s lengthy speech at the temple dedication. It is a poetic and formal utterance, and contins a number of intriguing features. First, it appears to be structured chiastically: Yahweh said A. to dwell (SHAKAN) B. in the gloom C. Building I have built B’. a house…
My son Christian noted a couple of cool things in the Bible this morning: 1) The law of the firstborn requires that the firstborn male of unclean animals like donkeys either be redeemed or killed: “every first opening of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, but if you…
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