Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
(continued from previous issue) Between 30 and 50 What did the Levites do between age 30 and 50? Numbers 4 shows us that they carried the house of God on their shoulders. Lifting up the Lord is an image of worship in the Bible, and David’s restructuring of the Levites…
When God created the world, He created two lands: the Throne-land of Eden (entered through the sanctuary-garden, the Garden of Eden), and the Outlying Lands, such as the lands of Havilah and Cush. This essentially bi-polar world is the world of the Old Creation, and it continued to exist until…
Color is inescapable, except for those who are color blind. In our church architecture, we either employ color schemes that are helpful to worship, or we employ color schemes that are not helpful. Of course, this assertion merely begs the question: What color schemes are most helpful. God showed interest…
As I noted in an earlier article in Rite Reasons , the Church Fathers Tertullian, Ambrose, and Augustine all claimed that baptism inducts the baptized person into membership in the royal priesthood of the church, and Thomas Aquinas said that baptism, by imprinting an indelible “character” on the soul, confers…
When the Aaronic priests were ordained, the blood of the ram of "filling” was placed on the lobe of the right ear, the right thumb, and the right big toe (Lev. 8:22-24). Similarly, the cleansing rite for a leper included smearing the right ear lobe, thumb, and big toe with…
In my Preliminary Commentary on Daniel , which many of you have obtained, I argued in chapter 13 that the four monsters called up from the sea by the evangelistic work of the four winds (the saints) represented the deep hatred of God that evangelistic work brings to the fore…
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In a recent discussion of penal substitution in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society , Garry Williams responds to the criticism that penal theories of the atonement are un-Trinitarian because they make the Son an object to the Father. Williams stresses that Jesus is a “subject of the atonement,”…
Pannenberg’s treatment of the atonement in Jesus - God and Man is one of the best short discussions of the subject available. Unlike most classical atonement theologies, Pannenberg’s integrates the whole gospel story and the resurrection into his account of the meaning of the atonement. One of the best parts…
White Christmas (1954) has been part of family Christmases for as long as I can remember. Bing Crosby’s voice is wonderful, but his middle-age-man-playing-hip hasn’t worn well over the years. Danny Kaye’s cracked-voice nervousness, his silly humor, and his surprisingly skillful dancing still work. Like all musicals, the film is…
Jack Miles a rambling, erudite, sometimes-insightful, half-hearted defense of religious faith to cultured despisers in the Atlantic . He found that as he matured, his youthful enthusiasm for Bertrand Russell and Camus waned. Turns out that science doesn’t overcome human ignorance like Russell thought it would: “with every increase in…
Frances Young argues in her Use of Sacrificial Ideas in Greek Christian Writers that the cross is primarily expiatory: It is God’s way of dealing with sin. It is not propitiatory in the ancient Greek sense of placating an angry God. How could it be, she asks, since the cross…
Frances Young ( Use of Sacrificial Ideas in Greek Christian Writers ) has a very rich account of Origen’s understanding of the atonement. Recent critics of sacrificial violence have nothing on Origen. Reflecting on the story of Jephthah’s daughter, he wrote that “the Being must be a very cruel one…
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