Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
One of the major themes of the book of Acts is that Christ’s servants follow in His footsteps. For instance, if we compare the lives of Jesus and Paul, we find that each engaged in several years of travelling and preaching. Each set his face toward Jerusalem. In each case…
(This continues a discussion of the Biblical and Assyrian chronologies, begun in earlier posts. You can click on the category, "Biblical Chronology," to see the previous posts. Was Ahab at Qarqar? Allis writes: "According to his Monolith Inscription, Shalmaneser III, in his sixth year (854 B.C.) made an expedition to…
I am not infrequently asked for advice on how to implement the kinds of things I’ve discussed in Rite Reasons and in my book The Sociology of the Church. To that end I’m providing in this essay some nuts and bolts that grow out of more than ten years of…
The first commandment given in the Levitical sacrificial legislation has to do with the animals appropriate to sacrifice: "When any man of you brings an offering to the Lord, you shall bring your offering of cattle ( behemah ), from the herd or the flock" (Lev. 1:2). Cattle alone were…
In the first week of November, the voters of the state of Washington were asked to approve or disapprove physician-assisted suicide. This has led to a good deal of comment on the issue of euthanasia in the press, and provokes the following reflections. 1. From a social policy standpoint, the…
We come this month to one of the most pernicious problems in the reconstruction of Ancient Near Eastern chronology, the problem of the Assyrian King Lists. We cannot proceed further with our survey of the chronology of the kings of Israel until we remove this roadblock from our path. We…
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One should not be surprised, given Peter Leithart’s track record, that something as imaginative as the Trinity Institute for Biblical, Liturgical , and Cultural Studies is to be formed in Birmingham, AL. But it is nonetheless an extraordinary event that should be celebrated not only among the Reformed, but all…
Bonhoeffer ( Ethics ) condemns both radicalism and compromise. Radicalism sees only the ultimate and dismisses and judges the penultimate; “everything penultimate is enmity towards Christ” (p. 127). Compromise ensures that the penultimate retains its rights and is not threatened by the ultimate, but in so doing limits the claims…
Bonhoeffer ( Ethics ) has a superb passage about the “deputy” rather than the isolated individual as the unit of ethical reflection. Everyone, he argues, is a deputy: “The fact that responsibility is fundamentally a matter of deputyship is demonstrated most clearly in those circumstances in which a man is…
A brief in favor of theology as Queen of the sciences at www.firstthings.com this morning.
When I first came to Japan in 1981, I was a premillennial dispensationalist struggling to plant a church in a pagan culture. Jordan’s The Law of the Covenant , which I read in 1984, showed me how the Bible could and must be read to apply to cultural issues today.…
In Ethics , Bonhoeffer discusses the relation of the “ultimate” to the “penultimate,” God to the world, grace to nature. He admits that being man and being good are “penultimate in relation to the justification of the sinner by grace.” But this doesn’t mean that the penultimate conditions or determines…
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