Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
WHAT IS THE OT PRECURSOR OF THE NT OFFICE OF PASTOR? HOW DOES THE FORMER ILLUMINATE THE LATTER? The first problem to address is: how do we know that there is an office of pastor in the New Testament? 1 Perhaps the way the question is put may permit me…
[This essay was originally published in December, 1981, in The Biblical Educator , a publication of the Institute for Christian Economics, and again with slight revisions in Contra Mundum 7 (Spring, 1993). It is reprinted here as a supplement to my book Creation in Six Days .] In 1979, Dr.…
Anyone seeking to reverse the meaning of this promise needs to come to grips not only with the phrase "God was with the lad" later on, but also with Hagar’s response in 16:13. She worships Yahweh, putting her trust in Him and obeying Him. In fact, Hagar is at the…
Ishmael is the narrator of Melville’s fantasy-romance Moby Dick. Melville takes up the traditional view of Ishmael as a wayward son of Abraham, driven out solely because of the Divine "caprice" of election, an angry man with his hand raised against all other men. He is a fitting "anti-hero," or…
There were five cities at the center of the Canaanite culture in the circle of the Jordan, a place like the Garden of Eden, like the land of Egypt, before it became the Dead Sea at the destruction of the cities (Genesis 13:10). Genesis 14:2 tells us their names: Sodom,…
Meditations by James B. Jordan Genesis 19, the destruction of Sodom and the rescue of Lot, is part two of a story that begins in Genesis 18. These two chapters happen in one 24-hour period: noon and evening in Mamre, and midnight and daybreak in Sodom. God and two angels…
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Luke 13 begins with a discussion of guilt and disasters. Pilate had slaughtered Galileans in the temple, mingling their blood with the blood of their sacrifices. Jesus denies that the Galileans who perished were greater sinners than others. Rather, “unless you repent, you shall also likewise perish.” NT Wright takes…
Many years ago, I critiqued traditional sacramental theology for overusing the zoom lens. Many debates and many theological formulations focus on the metaphysics of the bread and wine, and ignore other critical features of the Eucharistic event - the gathered church, eating and drinking, the specific type of food and…
In his forthcoming Wondrous Truths , JD Trout offers an alternative account of the rise of modern science. It's not the result of Christian views of the cosmos, nor of the dogged application of scientific method. It is the product of superior theory. And Western science has superior theory largely…
David Gelernter claims that Trump has identified the elephant plopped on our national coffee table - political correctness. He doesn't think the label is very descriptive, preferring to call it “invasive leftism or thought-police liberalism or metastasized progressivism.” It is, he says, “the biggest issue facing America today.” Its attitude…
Know thyself, someone said. Oh, right, answered the skeptic. “Knowing ourselves - what we are like, how we came to be this way, how we might be, and too, how we should be - is extraordinarily difficult because we are such complex and confusing creatures,” writes Terrence Martin in his…
Reflecting on the lessons of Donald Trump in a piece at Public Discourse , Matthew Wright points to The Speechwriter , a recent book by Barton Swaim, former speechwriter to South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. Wright summarizes, “Armed with a Ph.D. in English from Edinburgh, Swaim took up speechwriting with…
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