Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Some of the key ways Biblical writers draw attention to important details in their stories are by the use of key words, repetition, and structural devices like chiasms and parallel constructions. The Bible sounds different, even odd, to us sometimes because of the use of these and similar literary conventions.…
It is pretty standard in conservative Christian circles to condemn unbelief for pretensions of “autonomy.” Cornelius Van Til famously (at least among those of us who knows who he is) said that “There is no alternative but that of theonomy and autonomy.” Greg Bahnsen appealed to this quotation by labeling…
Jesus was the greatest teacher who ever taught — the Light of the World, whose pure Truth brought sight to the blind (John 9). Almost no one — even those who speak openly against Him — disputes His reputation as a wise and good teacher of the way of love.…
It is clear that the events in Esther are an integral part of the history of the formation of the Restoration Covenant Era. Amalek attacks. Amalek is spoiled. The spoils are used to build the Temple, in the sense that the crude Temple of Zerubbabel can now be glorified with…
It is not coincidental that John Calvin speaks most strongly in defense of vernacular language just after his defense of singing in church. "From this also it plainly appears that public prayers must be couched not in Greek among the Latins, nor in Latin among the French or English, as…
In A Voyage Around the World , George Anson recounts the effects of scurvy upon an unfortunate man: But a most extraordinary circumstance, and what would be scarcely credible upon any single evidence, is, that the scars of wounds which had been for many years healed, were forced open again…
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“Classic theories of modernization, from the 1950s,” write the editors of Reflections on Multiple Modernities , “identified the core of modernity, of modern social structure, as the decomposition of older ‘closed' formations and . . . of the growing potential for social mobilization, and the concomitant development of new structural,…
In a 2009 University of Michigan dissertation, Richard Persky explores the cultural meaning of time in ancient Greece, focusing on the concept of kairos . According to Persky, “a kairos is a moment of opportunity, the right time to do some particular thing. The allegorical sculpture made by Lysippos and…
Jerusalem descends from heaven a jeweled bride, with the luminosity of a precious stone, a “crystal-clear jasper” (v. 11; hos litho iaspidi krustallizonti ). She is also surrounded by a jasper wall (v. 18). How might the city be related to the wall? The structure of 21:18-22 gives us a…
In the Weekly Standard , Paul Cantor explains that both Shakespeare and Cervantes aimed their writing at a common target: Chivalry. He describes chivalry as “a noble ideal and at its best it did much to refine an otherwise coarse and brutal world, but it rested on shaky foundations and…
Susan Holman ( The Hungry Are Dying ) draws on recent scholarship to argue that “food doles, communal religious feasts, public works, or subsidized public entertainment prior to the Christianization of Graeco-Roman culture did not function out of any concern to alleviate poverty per se.” These “public works” or leitourgia…
Peter tells us that Jesus was the “just” man who suffered for the sins of the “unjust,” and that the purpose of this suffering was to “bring us to God.” William Dalton ( Christ's Proclamation to the Spirits ) points out that the verb prosago has technical legal meaning in…
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