Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I have never heard anyone say that the Bible is impractical, but I have heard people, after an in depth exegesis of a passage, ask for the practical application. Offer a class on childrearing, marriage, finance and the church members flock to it; offer a course on Leviticus, the visions…
Stones External and Internal The modern practice of dismantling the Bible into a shambles of documents authored in response to disparate historical events rather than viewing it as a unified testimony inspired by God is a surefire way to miss what is actually going on in the text. This failure…
King Asa of Judah made a strong start, purging the land of idols, altars, and images, and winning a war against the ginormous Cushite army led by Zerach. It all unraveled in his final years. From his thirty-fifth year to the forty-first year, when his reign came to an end,…
What appears to be Paul’s first recorded statement on justification comes in Acts 13, in a sermon at Pisidian Antioch. It's can serve as a summary of Paul's letter to the Romans, and throws some important light on the themes of that letter. Paul begins his sermon with a quick…
Iago as Tempter The answer to our first question — whether or not Othello is really great tragedy — has already pointed the way to the answer for the second question — Was Othello a noble Moor or a fool? The two questions, of course, are necessarily related. The fall…
When Adam McIntosh was ordained as Pastor of Saint David’s Church (CREC) in Houston on June 11, 2017, it was the culmination of decades of preparation. Adam is the product of two continents and three Christian traditions. Born in Paducah, Kentucky, he lived his early years partly in Jericho, where…
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Paul Griffiths ( Decreation ) ably defends a minority position in the history of theology, namely, that angels are not bodiless, though they are “immaterial.” They are “living creatures with discarnate bodies of energy” (125). To defend this point, he offers this brilliant little analysis of the meaning of “matter”…
The final sequence of Revelation begins with the fourth “in Spirit” vision of John (21:9-10). From that point to the end of the book, the “Lamb” is mentioned 7 times (21:9, 14, 22, 23, 27; 22:1, 3). The Lamb is entering His Sabbath, the wedding feast with His Bridal city.…
Elijah's life history tracks closely with that of Moses. When he appears on the scene, he curses Israel with drought, then flees the land (1 Kings 17). Like Moses after he killed the Egyptian, he goes out from his people and lives among Gentiles. (Elijah's sojourn in Zarephath also linked…
When the seventh trumpet blows, heaven opens and the ark of the covenant appears (Revelation 11:19). We're in the Most Holy Place. Before the ark-throne are two heavenly signs - a laboring woman and a dragon. It's Zechariah 3, with Satan and the priest Joshua before the throne, Satan accusing.…
Following a long tradition, Paul Griffiths says that creatures who come from nothing are constantly inclined to return to the nihil . We “remain uneasily in being, hovering over the void from which we came” ( Decreation , 142). Venerable as this is, it's misconceived. For starters we can ask…
As Andrei Zorin argues in a TLS piece this week, Tolstoy intended to defy novelistic convention in writing War and Peace . His book was not a novel, and Tolstoy refused the easy resolutions of the novel genre. Zorin agrees that there is something to this: “In one of the…
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