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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Stanley Fish, in a renowned essay on Bacon’s Essays , concludes that the essays are “unfinished with a purposefulness that makes the bestowing of the adjective less a criticism than a compliment.” He insists on the provisionality of knowledge, and “communicates that provisionality [in the Essays ] by letting the…
In a fascinating review of a recent book on evolution (TNR, Sept 4), Oren Harman suggests that reports of the death of Lamarck, proclaimed in every middle school science classroom for well over a century, may be somewhat exaggerated: Lamarckism “is and isn’t” dead. Insofar as Lamarckism meant “direct adaptive…
One of Barth’s main contentions that only a Triune God can give Himself. A monadic God might give, but would give something less than Himself. Only if God is both Himself and another, and only if that other is fully God, can God give Himself .
Bavinck writes: “It is wrong to conceive the decree as if it determined only a person’s end and coerced him or her in that direction regardless of what they did. The decree is as inconceivably rich as reality itself. It is, in fact, the fountainhead of all reality. It encompasses…
Blumenberg writes ( Legitimacy of the Modern Age ) that with Bacon, Kepler, and particularly Leibniz, the Augustinian suspicion of curiosity is overcome, and knowledge thereafter “justifies itself; it does not owe thanks for itself to God; it no longer has any tinge of illumination or graciously permitted participation but…
Blumenberg says that Bacon drew a distinction between metaphysics and physics in terms of human control: “The former has as its object the unalterable law beyond man’s influence; the latter comprises all knowledge of the operative and material causes that man can transpose in order to influence given states of…
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