Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I mentioned last month ( BH 82) in my essay "Like a Dove" that Genesis 8 is a recapitulation of Genesis 1. Let me explicate that assertion here. Of course, the world after the Flood is a new creation, so we may expect a recapitulation of the first creation. It…
The book of Esther is one of the most neglected of the books of the Bible. To be sure, sermons are preached on it, and commentaries have occasionally been written on it, but almost without exception Esther has been interpreted in isolation from the rest of Biblical history, chronology, and…
Dear Mr. ______, . . . Here is how I look at the geocentricity question. Since I don’t recall what I wrote you before, I may be repeating some things. 1. The Bible does not teach it. Biblical passages used to support the idea are being misinterpreted. My original paper…
Answer 4 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is often taken as a magnificent answer to the question, "What is God?" It reads: "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." Presbyterians are fond of praising this statement, preaching on it,…
The gospels tell us that at Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him "in bodily form like a dove" (Luke 3:22 & parallels). Biblically sensitive commentators have associated this event with three Old Testament parallels: (1) the hovering of the Spirit over the creation in Genesis 1:2; (2) the…
This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. (John 8:6) The story of the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:11) has been part of the canonical Christian Bible from its earliest…
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Several times, Revelation identifies God triadically, triunely as the one “who is and who was and who comes” (1:4, 8; 4:8). He is the present God, the God who reaches back beyond the origins of all things - the God of whom it could always be said “He is” -…
In the introduction to his recent Prophetic Lament , Soong-Chan Rah summarizes studies that show that “lament is often missing from the narrative of the American church” (21). One study “found that in the Lutheran Book of Worship , the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer , the Catholic Lectionary for…
Ron Highland's The Faithful Creator is “sustained argument with evangelical open theism, liberal process theism and other models of creation and providence that deny that God accomplishes his good will in all things.” All such paradigms, he argues, fail ‘to take God's transcendence seriously enough, thinking that God cannot relate…
Ron Highland argues ( The Faithful Creator ) that discussions of providence and freedom often get off on the wrong foot because of a faulty definition of freedom. “Many recent discussions of freedom give the impression that the Bible speaks directly and often about a freedom of the will given…
The exalted martyrs sing “the song ( ode ) of Moses the slave of God and the song of the Lamb” (Revelation 15:3). That could mean that the martyrs sing the song about or even composed by Moses and the Lamb. It could also mean that they sing a song…
In an address to Congress in 1826, Charleston's Catholic bishop John England declares his allegiance, and the allegiance of his church, to the American polity: “I would not allow to the Pope, or to any bishop of our church, outside the Union, the smallest interference with the humblest vote at…
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