Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8) O God the Father, creator of heaven and earth, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, who inspired Creation with the breath of your nostrils, who placed Adam in the…
For nearly a half-century, Sodom has been a key symbol in the American culture wars. On the one side, we have an aggressive movement among homosexuals that has first decriminalized homosexual conduct, then to force cultural and legal recognition of homosexuals as a minority and to normalize homosexual behaviors, finally…
Speaking of the Church, Romans 11:16-17 says, "And if the root be holy, the branches are also. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the root of the fatness of the…
At the end of Isaiah 61, Yahweh's Servant rejoices because the Lord clothes Him with salvation and righteousness. He decks Him like a bridegroom with a garland on His head. He wears jewels like a bride. He is a new bridegroom in a new garden of Eden, a garden of…
Before anything else, a word about “Torah” may be in order. I have been persuaded that “law” is a bad translation of “Torah,” even though it is evident that what is called “Torah” does have commandments, statutes, and ordinances in abundance. Why not “law?” “Law” as a translation for “Torah”…
Few novelists seem as innocent of the temptation to punditry as Jane Austen. Though living through a period that witnessed the birth of an independent United States, the French Revolution and the Terror, the Napoleonic wars and the rise of revolutionary romanticism, and the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, she…
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When a storm breaks out at sea on a voyage to Tarshish, the sailors want to know who Jonah is. He tells them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear Yahweh God of heaven who made the sea and dry land” (Jonah 1:9; Hebrew for “the dry” is yabbashah ).…
Psalm 101 begins as praise to the Lord (v. 1), but it quickly becomes a description of David's reign as king. He thinks of his royal house, and his rule, as a replica of Yahweh's palace and His rule. One must be pure to enter the courts of Yahweh, and…
In an essay entitled “The World is Not Flat,” sociologist Stephen Warner describes his growing realization of the limits of sociological theories of religion. Initially attracted to the “sacred canopy” ideas of Berger and Luckman, he came to the insight that the theories were forged from European rather than American…
I n a seminal 2001 essay, Fenggang Yang and Helen Rose Ebaugh studied 13 Houston-area religious institutions to discover how the religious lives of new immigrants are changed by their move to America. They discovered three processes: The congregations adapt “in organizational structure and ritual”; they return to “theological foundations”;…
To our modern democratic ear, “King of kings, Lord of lords” (1 Timothy 6:15; Revelation 17:14; 19:16) sounds redundant. It's not. The two superlatives are drawn from quite different contexts. Yahweh is “Lord of lords” (Deuteronomy 10:17; Psalm 136:3). But the only figures described as “king of kings” in the…
We are the temple of the living God, Paul says (2 Corinthians 6:16), and he supports the claim with a string of quotations. God says, “I will dwell in them and walk among them” (Exodus 29:45). He says, “I will be their God and they shall be My people” (Genesis…
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