Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Midwives are rarely mentioned in Scripture, but play a prominent role in the first chapter of Exodus. The word midwife is used seven times in verses 15-22, though it is used only twice elsewhere in the Old Testament. The reason, I think, is not merely that the midwives were heroic…
Leviathan (41:1-11) is the climax of the theophany, the culmination of the Lord’s speech. His final answer to Job’s injudicious charges against God’s justice. After hearing God rehearse the characteristics of Leviathan and His absolute power over him, Job instantly repents in dust and ashes. He confesses, "I know now…
Our purpose in this study is to lay out the chronology and history of the Kingdom of Judah from the reign of King Josiah to the completion of the exile of the Jews under Nebuchadnezzar, with particular attention to the events recorded in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The Empire of Assyria…
Protestants have always insisted that the sacraments bring no benefit without a response of faith, but this seems to undermine infant baptism, since infants do not appear to be able to exercise faith. Luther and Calvin held together their insistence on faith with infant baptism by claiming that infants can…
Traditional Presbyterian theologians regularly cite 1 Corinthians 11:28 as an argument against the practice of paedocommunion. Children must be able “to examine themselves” before they come to the table. Supposedly this text demands a certain level of intellectual capability as well as the capacity to engage in self-conscious introspection, both…
Yahweh’s two speeches at the end of the book of Job (38-41) should bring some closure to the book. The prologue has the whole cosmic order arrayed against the blameless and upright Job, "a man who feared God and shunned evil" (1:1, 8; 2:3). Yahweh’s capstone speeches affirm God’s absolute…
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Proctor again, summarizing a 1938 article on “Science and the Social Order” from Robert Merton: “the ideal of ‘pure science’ serves a dual function in modern society. On the one hand, the exaltation of pure science represents ‘a defense against the invasion of norms that limit directions of potential advance…
Proctor yet again, describing the division of political economy into separate disciplines of sociology and economics in the nineteenth century: “Social theory in the eyes of the young sociologists might strive to become scientific, but to do so it must abandon its craft or practical-political origins and restrict itself to…
Proctor again, speaking of Renaissance science: “In the science of the moderns, there arises a curious reversal of the order of art and nature. Art becomes the standard against which nature is judged. Francis Bacon’s ‘nature in distress’ - nature distraught by experiment - is as genuine as nature left…
The drive for purity in knowledge is an ancient one. Robert Proctor ( Value-Free Science? ) sees this impulse in Plato and Aristotle. For the former, knowledge is pure “in the degree to which it makes no appeal to practical arts. Thus Plato criticized Eudoxus, Archytas, and Menaechmus for trying…
CK Barrett argues in his John commentary that the anarthrous theos of John 1:1 (emphasized by Arians everywhere and at all times) shows that “the Word is God, but is not the only being of whom this is true; if ho theos had been written it would have been implied…
After Genesis 15, the next time the “word of God came . . . saying” is in Samuel. The word of God comes to Samuel, saying that Saul is rejected (1 Samuel 15:10), and again comes to Nathan to deliver the promise to David (2 Samuel 7:4). The connection of…
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