Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In an earlier paper 1 I argued that the story of Jonah belongs in the book of KINGS. Jonah and the unnamed Judean prophet in 1K13 are paired by the author through literary links. The Judean prophet travels longitudinally to confront national paganism and is killed but not swallowed by…
The Scriptures have much to say about “the day.” “This is the day that the Lord has made,” sings the Psalmist (Psalm 118:24). But what exactly is the day ? Or, more broadly, what even is a day? Days make up human life like water, light, and air. There’s no…
According to the Westminster Confession of Faith 21:5, “God is to be worshipped everywhere, in spirit and truth, …” A similar phrase is found in the OPC’s Directory for Public Worship (II.6). In my experience in the OPC and other Reformed churches, the phrase is often interpreted to mean that…
Introduction In Genesis 3:16, after the fall, God said that Eve would “desire” her husband and that her husband would “rule” over her. It is popular for Christians to interpret Eve's desire as sinful, that she would try to usurp her husband's authority. Likewise, some interpret Adam's rule as sinful,…
White Western/Christian society has long discriminated against lesbians and homosexuals — ever since the days of Moses — who was neither white nor Christian, but that is beside the point — who claimed that God gave him revelation about what a man or woman is and how they should relate…
They Found a Book in a Wall, You Won’t Believe What Happens Next The secret behind the history of quiet times will make your quiet times more effective than ever. One of the enduring mysteries of American Evangelicalism is the question of the source of Quiet Times: A Handbook ,…
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I n an 1881 article , F.W. Farrar examined the case for Nero as the sea beast of Revelation 13. Many contemporary scholars dismiss this because they believe that Revelation was written decades after Nero. Farrar makes a circumstantial and exegetical case for the identification, and in the process provides…
I n a 1977 Daedalus article on “ The Family and the City ,” French historian Philippe Aries argued that “the real roots of the present domestic crisis lie not in our families, but in our cities.” As cities “deterioriated” and urban culture weakened, “the omnipotent, omnipresent family took upon…
P salm 87 is a hymn to Zion. The name “Zion” occurs four times, and the Psalm declares Yahweh's love for Zion (v. 1), the glory of Zion as city of God (v. 2), the joy that fills Zion (v. 6). It could be a “nationalistic” hymn to Israel's ancient…
I n her contribution to The Peace of God , Amy Remensnyder examines the eleventh-century crackdown on simony, clerical marriage and unchastity, and the clergy's involvement in war. These were characterized as pollutions of the clergy and the church, and the rules were framed as purity prohibitions. Gregory VII denounced…
A mericans have often justified American order and American exceptionalism by invoking “the myth of nature,” write Robert Hughes and C. Leonard Allen in Illusions of Innocence (205). They “first employed this myth to justify freedom from tyranny. But they soon began equating nature with particular dimensions of national life…
I n a review of Jacob Milgrom's Anchor Bible Leviticus commentary, Jonathan Klawans provides a helpful summary of the achievement of Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger : Against especially Robertson Smith and Frazer, Douglas argued that avoidance behaviors could no longer be dismissed as something inherently or distinctly primitive. Douglas…
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