Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A couple of decades ago, when I was a young Reconstructionist (instead of a middle-aged post-Reconstructionist), I coined the phrase "political polytheism" to describe how modern evangelical Christians approach matters of social law and politics. Christians want the Bible for Church and family life, but turn to other gods for…
Gary North has from time to time taken note of some of the differences between contracts and covenants. For him, one of the most important is the oath-character of a covenant. Naturally, the English terms "contract" and "covenant" can be used with varying nuances by different writers, and their zone…
The Book of Chronicles is the last book in the Hebrew Canon of the Old Testament. The word "canon" means "authoritative list" when used in connection with the Bible. What we call the Hebrew Canon consists of 24 books arranged in three major divisions: the Law, the Prophets, and the…
by: Peter Leithart and James Jordan The Book of Kings is structured chiastically, or concentrically. To see this clearly, we start in the middle and work our way outward. 2 Kings 3–7 record the central events of the ministry of Elisha. Elisha makes his first appearance in 1 Kings 19:19-21,…
(The following is a supplement to my book, God’s War Against Humanism , a study of the book of Judges, available from Biblical Horizons for $20.00 – a photocopy of the original book, which is now out of print). The turning point in the book of Judges is 8:22-28. Here…
From time to time I am asked how I think the Lord’s Supper should be done. This essay is my response to that question. To start with, we should agree that the Lord’s Supper is the only ritual we are obligated to do in the New Covenant on a routine…
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Isaiah 65 piles up charges of idolatry and impurity against Israel. They are supposed to offer continuous sacrifices, but their sacrifices are a continuous provocation (65:3). They build their altars from bricks rather than from stones, as the law requires (65:3). The sacrificial smoke doesn’t sooth Yahweh but is an…
In an essay at Slate , David Auerbach tells a story about John Harris, a game-programmer: “While working on an 8-bit Atari port of Frogger in the early 1980s, Harris said, “’ glued my hands to the keyboard.’ One day he started programming midafternoon, losing himself in work. The next…
P oet Kenneth Goldsmith gives a taxonomy of smartness and dumbness. There are various permutations. He prefers dumb, but it has to be smart dumb: “There is dumb dumb and there is smart dumb. There is also smart smart. Dumb dumb is plain dumb and smart smart is plain smart.…
In a 1987 review of Peter Sloterdijk’s Critique of Cynical Reason , Neil Wilson observes that for Sloterdijk “cynicism is enlightenment turned sour: a sourness which results from the self-denial that self-survival in a society dominated by instrumental rationality requires” (55). It is not a new attitude, but an ancient…
Peter Sloterdijk distinguishes in his Critique of Cynical Reason (139-40) between the objectifying and distancing aims of Enlightenment thought and the inescapable “physiognomic sense” of life among fleshly humans: “Whereas the process of civilization, whose core is constituted by the sciences, teaches us to distance ourselves from people and things…
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