Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
(continued from previous issue) Between 30 and 50 What did the Levites do between age 30 and 50? Numbers 4 shows us that they carried the house of God on their shoulders. Lifting up the Lord is an image of worship in the Bible, and David’s restructuring of the Levites…
When God created the world, He created two lands: the Throne-land of Eden (entered through the sanctuary-garden, the Garden of Eden), and the Outlying Lands, such as the lands of Havilah and Cush. This essentially bi-polar world is the world of the Old Creation, and it continued to exist until…
Color is inescapable, except for those who are color blind. In our church architecture, we either employ color schemes that are helpful to worship, or we employ color schemes that are not helpful. Of course, this assertion merely begs the question: What color schemes are most helpful. God showed interest…
As I noted in an earlier article in Rite Reasons , the Church Fathers Tertullian, Ambrose, and Augustine all claimed that baptism inducts the baptized person into membership in the royal priesthood of the church, and Thomas Aquinas said that baptism, by imprinting an indelible “character” on the soul, confers…
When the Aaronic priests were ordained, the blood of the ram of "filling” was placed on the lobe of the right ear, the right thumb, and the right big toe (Lev. 8:22-24). Similarly, the cleansing rite for a leper included smearing the right ear lobe, thumb, and big toe with…
In my Preliminary Commentary on Daniel , which many of you have obtained, I argued in chapter 13 that the four monsters called up from the sea by the evangelistic work of the four winds (the saints) represented the deep hatred of God that evangelistic work brings to the fore…
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The Lamb receives a scroll that is sealed with seven seals (Revelation 5). One by one, He breaks the seals, and but that un-sealing climaxes with a sealing: During the sixth seal, an angel seals 144,000, 12,000 from twelve tribes (Revelation 7). The literary pattern reinforces this movement. The word…
Joseph is the bow-tribe, according to Genesis 49:23-24: Though attached by archers, his hands are strong to respond. Psalm 78:9 tells us that Ephraim, the largest sub-tribe of Joseph, is also a tribe of bowmen. But, referring to a battle recorded in Judges 20, the Psalm indicates that Ephraim’s bowmen…
“Stars are suddenly formed in the heavens themselves,” Pliny writes in his Natural History (II.22). “Of these there are various kinds.” He goes on to enumerate them: “The Greeks name these stars comets ; we name them Crinitæ, as if shaggy with bloody locks, and surrounded with bristles like hair.…
Adam Johnson’s God’s Being in Reconciliation examines the work of Karl Barth in order to show how “Barth’s understanding of God’s triune being-in-act . . . provides the proper theological framework for developing the doctrine of the atonement” (10). Johnson argues that earlier studies of the Trinitarian framework for atonement…
Artists can be awfully protective of their work. In his forthcoming Copyright Wars , Peter Baldwin observes that Samuel Beckett “objected . . . when directors performed his plays with women, non-white casts, or incidental music. He sued the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge for playing Endgame in an abandoned…
As long as he’s in heaven preying on the child of the woman, he is called “dragon” (Revelation 12). Once cast down, his titles multiply: The dragon is also the archaic serpent, called the devil and Satan. A fourfold name for the “ruler of this world” who is cast out…
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