Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The drink offering or libation ( nesek ) is mentioned in only three places in the book of Leviticus. When the sheaf of the firstfruits was waved before the Lord, a grain offering was to be burned, along with "its libation, a fourth of a hin of wine [approx. one…
When I became a Calvinist it wasn't long before I learned that John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ was regarded as the masterful treatise on what is known as "Limited Atonement"--the "L" in the TULIP mnemonic device for "the five points of Calvinism." This wasn't…
One of the advantages of paying very close attention to the details in the Bible, especially chronological and genealogical details, is that they can shed light on situations that don’t seem to make much sense apart from them. One such situation is that of Bathsheba. It appears that Bathsheba willingly…
The Feast of Ingathering in the seventh month of the Sinaitic calendar is also called the Feast of Sukkoth, of Booths, also called Feast of Tabernacles. I have usually called it by that last phrase, and it is the most common today; but there is a problem: A tabernacle is…
When Matthew’s Gospel was first read aloud to the fledgling Christian congregations, the experience must have been like seeing the words “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” appear afresh on cinema screens in 1999. Yet, unlike The Phantom Menace, the New Testament did not disappoint. Why?…
Fragmentation and integration are phenomena which artist Makoto Fujimura feels bodily, and about which he is concerned profoundly. What do these mean for him? How may we draw his insights into this ongoing consideration—itself integrative—of integration in a fragmented world? Thus far I have been acquainting you with matters already…
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What is conversion? There are different answers, argued Jerald Brauer in a 1978 essay on conversion in the Journal of Religion . He contrasts Puritan notions of conversion with those of later revivalist. Over several centuries, conversion was converted from a more corporate change to an individual experience, and from…
In a 2004 essay on global history, the late C.A. Bayly challenged the “fashionable emphasis on the wholly destructive effects of Western ‘colonialism.' Famine, the disruption of local communities, the exacerbation of religious and racial tensions: these are all attributed to the Western impact as vigorously by contemporary cultural critics…
One of the lesser-known movements discussed by Louis Newman in his Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements is the twelfth-century heresy initiated by Peter of Bruys and known as the Petrobrussian heresy. The Petrobrussians were similar to earlier and later movements in their rejection of infant baptism, their renunciation of…
“Put me like a seal on your heart, like a seal on your arm,” says the Bride in the Song of Songs (8:6). Seals mark something with the name of the owner. A letter is sealed as proof of its author (1 Kings 21:8). The high priest's golden plate is…
Paul Avis wrote Becoming a Bishop as a theological handbook for bishops, but much of the book has a wider application to all church leaders. His advice about handling conflicts in the church is judicious. His “first and most basic” piece of advice is “Don't be afraid.” Fear can appear…
According to J. Stuart Russell ( The Parousia , 503), the Jewish War of the late 60s AD involved more than Palestine. Slaughter encompassed the empire, wherever Jews were: “Tacitus speaks of the bitter animosity with which the Arab auxiliaries of Titus were filled against the Jews, and we have…
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