Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8) O God the Father, creator of heaven and earth, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, who inspired Creation with the breath of your nostrils, who placed Adam in the…
For nearly a half-century, Sodom has been a key symbol in the American culture wars. On the one side, we have an aggressive movement among homosexuals that has first decriminalized homosexual conduct, then to force cultural and legal recognition of homosexuals as a minority and to normalize homosexual behaviors, finally…
Speaking of the Church, Romans 11:16-17 says, "And if the root be holy, the branches are also. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the root of the fatness of the…
At the end of Isaiah 61, Yahweh's Servant rejoices because the Lord clothes Him with salvation and righteousness. He decks Him like a bridegroom with a garland on His head. He wears jewels like a bride. He is a new bridegroom in a new garden of Eden, a garden of…
Before anything else, a word about “Torah” may be in order. I have been persuaded that “law” is a bad translation of “Torah,” even though it is evident that what is called “Torah” does have commandments, statutes, and ordinances in abundance. Why not “law?” “Law” as a translation for “Torah”…
Few novelists seem as innocent of the temptation to punditry as Jane Austen. Though living through a period that witnessed the birth of an independent United States, the French Revolution and the Terror, the Napoleonic wars and the rise of revolutionary romanticism, and the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, she…
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Guy Waters thinks that I’m abandoning the Reformation by questioning an ontology rooted in the notion of “substance.” I say, On the contrary. In an article on the Reformation doctrine of justification, Berndt Hamm writes: “Behind this epoch-making change in the understanding of justification and salvation, as Wilfried Joest has…
Austen Farrer suggests this numerological interpretation of Matthew 1: Matthew arranges the genealogy in “three pairs of sevens, six ‘weeks’ grouped in twos.” Thus, “we have only six, as it were the working ‘days’ of a week of weeks. In six days God made heaven and earth, including (in the…
Matthew introduces his genealogy with a phrase drawn from Gen 2:4 and 5:1: the “book of the genesis.” It looks as if Jesus is the end point of the genealogy, as if it begins with Abraham and ends with Joseph/Jesus. That’s clearly true. But when we examine the allusion to…
In Num 14:22, Yahweh charges that Israel has tested Him “these ten times.” Ronald Allen offers this list of 10 rebellions in his Expositor’s Bible Commentary: 1. Israel’s fear that Pharaoh would destroy them, Ex 14:10-12 2. Marah, Ex 15:22-24 3. Hunger in the wilderness, Ex 16:1-3 4. Disobedience to…
Jesus obviously welcomes children to Himself, but I wonder if there’s isn’t something more specific going on in the gospel stories about Jesus and children. Something like this: Jesus is the new Moses who calls Israel to follow Him to the promised land. Many in Israel refuse, and Jesus condemns…
Guy Waters devotes a chapter to my views on sacramental theology in his recent book. While much of it is a reasonably accurate summary of my various writings on this subject, he devotes a few pages to critique. Here are a few responses to that critique. 1) Waters rightly notes…
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