Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
From time to time, when I’ve lectured on how to read the Bible, I’ve used art-music as one example thereof. When we listen to a simple folk song, we hear the same melody over and over again, but this is not how composers write "high" music. Let me amplify. A…
Sermons are rarely more tiresome than when they strive for relevance. Drawing from the latest headlines transforms the preacher into a one-man MacLaughlin Group, a Crossfire without the cross though perhaps with some of the fire, and leave the congregation thinking, "If I wanted Meet the Press, I could have…
Part One: The Old Testament “Drink is in itself a good creature of God, and to be received with thankfulness, but the abuse of drink is from Satan, the wine is from God, but the drunkard is from the Devil” Increase Mather in Wo to Drunkards (1673). 1. The “wine”…
28. These are the people whom Nebuchadnezzar carried away into exile: in the 7th year 3023 Jews. 29. In the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar 832 persons from Jerusalem. 30. In the 23rd year of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile 745 Jewish people; there were 4600…
Revelation 21:24 says, concerning the light shining from the New Jerusalem, "and the nations will walk by her light, and the kings of the land will bring their glory into her." Similarly, Revelation 22:2 says, concerning the Tree of Life, that "the leaves of the tree were for the healing…
Jeremiah and the Beginning of Jehoiakim’s Reign Now comes Jeremiah, at the beginning of Jehoiakim’s reign, with similar words (Jeremiah 26). Harken to God’s law, he said, or else God will destroy the Temple the same way He sent the Philistines to tear down the Tabernacle at Shiloh (Jeremiah 26:6;…
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Pastor Ralph Smith’s series of essays on Deuteronomy 22-23 continues at the Trinity House web site.
John 12:20-23 seems slightly comical. Some Greeks want to see Jesus, and approach Philip, a Galilean. Philip doesn’t simply tell them where Jesus is, but tells Andrew, who goes to tell Jesus that some Greeks want to see Him. In the end, it’s not at all clear if the Greeks…
Israel was redeemed from Egypt ( padah , Deuteronomy 7:8), and in various ways signified that redemption by redemption of firstborn animals (Exodus 13:13-15; 34:20). Jeremiah too speaks of redemption (15:21) from the hand of the wicked and violent. He hopes for a new exodus, enacted not in the life…
I like Ross Douthat, a lot. But I hate to agree with Nate Cohn’s rebuttal to Douthat’s claim that Bush’s overreach in the Iraq war is “responsible for liberalism’s current political and cultural ascendance.” Douthat implies, Cohn claims, that Americans are still conservative. I’m inclined to think that Cohn is…
Derrrida got started early with his combination of intelligence and obscurity. Emily Eakin notes : “In May of 1951, at the age of twenty, Jacques Derrida took the entrance exams for the prestigious École Normale Supérieure a second time, having failed, as many students do, in his first attempt the…
Contemplating the death of his first wife, Dostoevsky uncovered what he thought was a proof of the afterlife. (The notebook entry is translated in Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time , 407-9.) The first plant of the argument was to notice that human beings are incapable of following…
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