Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Suppose that the theistic evolutionists are right, and that the Big Bang Hypothesis is correct. In that case, God originally created a Primeval Atom, which then exploded and congealed to form the present universe. Now, if you had arrived on the scene one quintillionth of a second after God created…
According to Galatians 3, Abraham heard the gospel when the Lord promised that "all the nations shall be blessed in you." Paul quotes here from Genesis 12:3, but the context puts an odd slant on the Old Testament text. Galatians 3 starts with a series of rhetorical questions about the…
Ephesians 2.15: ton vomon twv enotwn en dogmasin katargesas, ina tous duo ktise en autw eis ena kainon anthrwpon, poiwn eirenen having annulled the law of the commandments in decrees, in order that He might create in Him[self] the two into one new man, making peace. The above translation is…
In The Oddness of the Feast of Booths , we saw that the Feast of Booths is a commemoration of the first encampment of Israel at Sukkoth (Booths) in Exodus 12:37, almost certainly the first celebration of the week of Unleavened Bread after the first Passover. The Feast of Booths…
James Jordan has pointed out in Through New Eyes and elsewhere that the Mosaic system of worship comes to an end with the dismemberment of the tabernacle in 1 Samuel 4-6. Because of the sins of Eli and his sons, that priestly family is cut off and the ark is…
In a significant essay in the 19 April 1999 issue of The Weekly Standard, entitled "Wars of Hatred and the Hatred of War," Charles H. Fairbanks, Jr., points out a significant shift that seems to be taking place in the modern world. He begins by asserting his thesis, that a…
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Lawrence Stone records the following in his classic Crisis of the Aristocracy : “So deep [was] feeling of a fundamental distinction of ranks that gentlemen did not hesitate to behave in ways which would today be considered base and even cowardly. When Lord Herbert of Cherbury was shipwrecked at Dover…
A hypothesis to explore: What is the connection between the postmodern “death of the author” and higher critical methods of biblical interpretation? Did the dissolution of the text in biblical studies contribute to a dissolution of the author in texts generally? To what extent is Wellhausen responsible for Barthes and…
At times, I’ve felt that my polemics against semi-marcionitism in sacramental theology and hermeneutics finds no actual targets. And then I read something like this. In his book on hermeneutics, Louis Berkhof characterizes the difference between type and antitype: “The one represents truth on a lower, the other, the same…
Butler cleverly suggests that postmodernism’s leftism ends up underwriting rightist politics: “a left-inspired distrust of authority . . . makes recognition of difference possible, and yet those who are perhaps most in favor of leaving differently defined groups in isolation, to compete and fight it out, are those on the…
Poor Christopher Butler: He really doesn’t like postmodernism, but he keeps saying that postmodernism at its most sane is just repeating what liberals have always believed and doing what liberals have always done. Postmodernists challenge “the boundaries of our social roles,” and liberals join in; in fact, “the postmodernist deconstructive…
Postmodernists claim that discourses are inevitably exercises of power. To theorize is to classify, and classification, well, puts things in classes, asserts authority over them. Butler offers this example: “You believe what the young surgeon tells you, and so you give him permission to anaesthetize you, cut you up, and…
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