Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
"Vanity of vanities", says the Preacher. "All is vanity". Life, we are told in the book of Ecclesiastes, is a repetitious, wearisome cycle; all that is and all that will be has already been. There is nothing new under the sun. What is crooked cannot be made straight, what is…
The Bible tells us that when God created the earth, He set up three zones of life. The first was the world itself. The second was the holy land of Eden. And the third was the Garden in Eden, God’s sanctuary. God told Adam and Eve that every tree was…
In our survey of Biblical chronology we have arrived at the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, which provide chronological information for the period after the return from exile, the Restoration Period of Old Testament history. The question we begin to address in this essay is whether the Artaxerxes of these…
These verses from the Sermon on the Mount are generally taken in connection with Jesus’ earlier statement concerning adultery in the heart (vv. 27-28); the eye and the hand have obvious relevance to the sin of adultery. At the same time, most commentators admit that the principle of avoiding occasions…
17. The eye that mocks a father, And despises to obey a mother, The ravens of the valley will pick it out, And the young eagles will eat it. 18. There are three things that are too wonderful for me, Four that I do not understand: 19. The way of…
The modern Church in America and virtually everywhere else is ideology-centered, not geographical. This is because various Churches believe different things and have different customs of worship and sacraments. The ideological Church has gradually developed from the time of the Reformation, because accuracy of doctrine has become more important to…
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In a 2005 article, Daniel Van Slyke explores the use of sacramentum in non-Christian writers from the ancient world. He reiterates the common observation that the term is most often used in military contexts to describe the engagement of soldiers to military service. Livy, for instance, writes that during a…
John Milbank is no nominalist, yet in Beyond Secular Order he insists that the nominalists raised questions that could not simply be answered by a return to Thomas. He points to four questions: Do creatures stand “outside” God in any sense? Does analogy violate the law of non-contradiction (2 things…
My little post on Gender Arianism created some buzz. Some of the responses missed my argument. But that was partly my fault for making the argument so briefly and (perhaps) opaquely. Here's what I hope is a somewhat clearer statement of the argument. In Deep Comedy , I argued that…
It is widely believed that if the world is a causally closed system, then God cannot be involved in the world. He cannot introduce new information. William Dembski ( Being As Communion ) disputes the conclusion. He concedes that “causal closure in a deterministic universe precludes what may be called…
Arians say that the Son isn't eternal God, but a high-level creature. There is a twofold assumption behind Arianism: First, that the Absolute must be un-related. A related Absolute becomes relative to the one to whom it is related. Trinitarian theology rejected this premise and followed Scripture in affirming an…
In his Beginnings of Judaism , Shaye Cohen devotes a chapter to ancient usages of the meaning of the term ioudaizein . It appears only once in extant classical sources, once in the LXX of Esther, once in Paul, two times in Josephus. Most of the ancient uses are from…
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