Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The drink offering or libation ( nesek ) is mentioned in only three places in the book of Leviticus. When the sheaf of the firstfruits was waved before the Lord, a grain offering was to be burned, along with "its libation, a fourth of a hin of wine [approx. one…
When I became a Calvinist it wasn't long before I learned that John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ was regarded as the masterful treatise on what is known as "Limited Atonement"--the "L" in the TULIP mnemonic device for "the five points of Calvinism." This wasn't…
One of the advantages of paying very close attention to the details in the Bible, especially chronological and genealogical details, is that they can shed light on situations that don’t seem to make much sense apart from them. One such situation is that of Bathsheba. It appears that Bathsheba willingly…
The Feast of Ingathering in the seventh month of the Sinaitic calendar is also called the Feast of Sukkoth, of Booths, also called Feast of Tabernacles. I have usually called it by that last phrase, and it is the most common today; but there is a problem: A tabernacle is…
When Matthew’s Gospel was first read aloud to the fledgling Christian congregations, the experience must have been like seeing the words “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” appear afresh on cinema screens in 1999. Yet, unlike The Phantom Menace, the New Testament did not disappoint. Why?…
Fragmentation and integration are phenomena which artist Makoto Fujimura feels bodily, and about which he is concerned profoundly. What do these mean for him? How may we draw his insights into this ongoing consideration—itself integrative—of integration in a fragmented world? Thus far I have been acquainting you with matters already…
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Israel’s priests did not inherit land. Many lived in cities and they possessed the land immediately surrounding. But they did not get a separate plot when the land was divided. Yahweh said He was their inheritance (Numbers 18:19), and He said it chiastically: A. In the land you will not…
Christoph Schwobel’s contribution to Justification in a Post-Christian Society is characteristically grand. Exploring what contribution Lutheranism can make to contemporary society, he focuses on central Lutheran concerns - promise and trust. His explanation of the grammar of promise is densely brilliant: “The central distinction between law and gospel only becomes…
Christoph Schwobel’s analysis of promising ( Justification in a Post-Christian Society ) opens out into a discussion of theology proper with a reference to Luther’s claim that God identifies Himself in Exodus 3:14 as the God who promises Himself, “so that this promise is God’s essence in relation to which…
“We have an altar, from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat. For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as an offering for sin are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also, that He might…
In his study of Calvin’s Company of Pastors , Scott Manetsch estimates that “just under 5 percent of all excommunications” in Geneva were imposed because of “Catholic behavior” (203). By this phrase, he refers to “instances where people voluntarily aligned themselves with some dimension of Roman Catholic faith or practice,…
Adam Smith wrote, briefly in several places, of an invisible hand that guided economic life. The work of this invisible hand was to bend self-interested actions to socially beneficent ends. As Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations : “By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry,…
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