Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
As Adam and Eve walked to the center of the Garden of Eden to meet with the LORD on their first Sabbath they conversed about the origin and age of the earth. Adam: You know, honey, we spent a lot of time yesterday making preparations for our house, and we…
Some of our forefathers believed in reading/singing the psalms in order. Today, when the psalms are even used at all, they tend to be used randomly, though sometimes tied to a church calendar or to the pastor’s sermon. The Bible does not bind us to any particular practice, but there…
Dr. Collins begins his essay with a brief statement of the Day Age view and then a brief statement of the Six Day view, focussing on the challenge to that view posed by modern "science." He ends this discussion by writing: "Two crucial points are at stake here: first, the…
In his The Construction of Social Reality , Berkeley philosopher John Searle puzzles over the ontology of the products of human construction. Certain things – granite, platypi, weeping willows – occur naturally; while other realities – stone walls, zoos and parks, Chase Manhattan Bank – exist only as products of…
In the journal Presbyterion 20 (1994):109-130, published by Covenant Theological Seminary, Dr. C. John Collins sets forth a revision of the Day Age approach in his essay, "How Old Is the Earth? Anthropomorphic Days in Genesis 1:1–2:3." Dr. Collins’s essay has been widely accepted in evangelical Presbyterian circles as an…
The Righteousness of Shem and Japheth As noted above, the action of Shem and Japheth was purely symbolic. They did not need to cover Noah with a garment, for he was already covered by the tent. Their action was a symbolic affirmation of Noah’s authority, a symbolic rejection of Ham’s…
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At the end of Revelation 9, we are informed that even the three plagues of fire, smoke, and brimstone did not drive men to repentance. Instead, they clung to their idols. Once idols are mentioned, they are described in terms of both materials and their threefold inability. They are constructed…
The idolater ends up eating ashes, Isaiah says (Isaiah 44:20). In context, that fits with Isaiah’s emphasis on the fact that the idols is made from the refuse of a building project. A carpenter cuts cedar, builds a fire, cooks bread and his meat, and from the leftovers he makes…
Isaiah’s attack on idols elaborates on the tools and technologies that the id0l-maker uses. The smith uses an iron tool and hammer (Isaiah 44:12), the carpenter a measuring line, plane, and compass (v. 13). Several of these words are used nowhere else in the Old Testament, and this is one…
Idols are substitutes for the true God. But as Isaiah describes the construction of idols in his idol polemic in Isaiah 44, the idol emerges equally as an alternative temple, an alternative “meeting place” between God and man. The echoes of the temple texts are numerous. Isaiah refers to iron…
We are now certain that the Trinity Institute exists. It’s on Facebook - www.facebook.com/TheTrinityInstitute
Lacey Baldwin Smith’s 1997 Fools, Martyrs, Traitors: The Story of Martyrdom in the Western World (CUSA) is a maddening book. On the one hand, it is peppered with insights into the dynamics and history of martyrdom. Like: “martyrdom for all of its religious and teleological overtones is at heart a…
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