Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
“We have a God who hides things because He loves to be sought out, chewed out and found out.” As Christians, we are rightly taught that we must not question God’s Word. The problem is that the Scriptures record many things which appear to have been given to us for…
The book of Revelation is a liturgy. John begins “in the Spirit” on the “Lord’s day” (1:10). Jesus appears, and Jesus tells him to record messages to seven churches, words of encouragement and rebuke, like the call to worship and confession at the beginning of a Christian liturgy. In chapter…
In my previous posts, I looked at the theme of creation as it is found in a sequence of psalms devoted to Yahweh’s Kingship (Psalms 93-100). Among other matters, these psalms declare that when the Kingdom of Israel’s God comes, it is the Kingdom of the world’s own Creator .…
The church in Corinth was a pastoral nightmare. Factionalism, sexual immorality, incipient syncretism, using the church as a stage for self-promotion, and denial of the final resurrection were just some of the problems. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church, he confronts each of these problems directly and in…
The first chapters of the Word of God have a poetic rhythm. This is used to discredit their accuracy as historical narrative, but the truth is that these same rhythms continue far beyond the book of Genesis. In fact, the later texts shed light on the frustratingly succinct account of…
Mr. Martian: What’s that there? Mr. Edison: (Edison holds up a standard, 60 watt lightbulb). It’s a lightbulb. Mr. Martian: A “lightbulb” you say? What exactly is a “lightbulb”? Mr. Edison: A lightbulb is an object used to illuminate a dark area, say a room. It’s made primarily of filament…
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Following John McWhorter, I wrote recently about the religion of Antiracism . Tara Isabella Burton calls it the religion of social justice. We're talking about much the same thing, a novel religion that is a shadow form of Christian orthodoxy. "Social justice is a religion," she writes in Strange Rites…
Exodus 28 is organized outside-in, first describing the visible, exterior portions of the high priest's robes and then the hidden or partially hidden underclothes. There's also a movement upward, from torso to head. The passage is crowned with a description of Aaron's golden crown. The crown is called a tziytz…
When will the tumult die down and things get back to 2019-era normal? Maybe never. A pandemic that might have united the United States has divided us further. Demonstrations sparked by a real abuse of power have driven some policemen from the streets. While everyone was looking the other way,…
There are at least two sorts of hopeless Christians these days. One sort despairs as they survey America's history of abuse of blacks, the evils and hypocrisies of slavery and Jim Crow, the terror of lynchings and bombings and the Klan, the church's appalling racist theology. Will America ever find…
Yahweh's design for Aaron's robes in Exodus 28 moves from outside in, from the ephod and attached breastpiece (28:6-30) to the robe beneath the ephod (28:31-35) to the tunic (28:39) and underwear breeches (28:42-43). Verses 36-38 interrupt the movement with a description of the high priest's head gear. Otherwise, the…
Aaron’s breastpiece ( chosen ) is woven of gold, colored wool thread, and linen, square like. the Holy of Holies (Exodus 28:15). It’s a span in length and a span in width, folded double to form a pouch (Exodus 28:16), and attached to the ephod by gold rings and chains…
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