Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Higher critics have, for a long time, posited a Second Isaiah to account for the structural and tone differences in the book from chapter 40 on. Now, we do believe in a Second Isaiah, but believe that the form critics have generally suffered from a lack of imagination both in…
A couple of the most serious mistranslations in our Bibles are found in the book of Leviticus. The main reason these errors have gone unreformed, I believe, is because Leviticus is simply not studied often enough, so the problem has never been fully addressed. The first mistranslation is found right…
Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , is really a parenthesis inside of the larger reality of Christian history. Progress and forward movement inside of science is a footnote to the larger and more general reality of covenant renewals in both Biblical and Christian history. The fundamental mark…
James Jordan, in the June/July 1995 Biblical Horizons, wrote a very helpful essay, "The Great Hangover," the gist of which I entirely agree with. The theme of the essay was that the Church to move forward must shuck off the old husks of Hellenism, Rabbinism, and undo admiration for all…
Traditionally, the three offices in the Presbyterian churches have been teaching elder, ruling elder, and deacon. These have been associated with priest, elder, and Levite respectively. We have seen that the deacon is in fact an apprentice and assistance elder. We have also seen that Levites as well as priests…
John 7:39 interprets Jesus’ offer of living water as an offer of the Spirit to those who believe, "for," John continues, "the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified." John was not making an ontological statement about the Spirit, as if the Spirit did not exist until…
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The distinction between sacred and profane is said to be a universal religious structure, but it’s remarkably rare in the Hebrew Bible. Holy things are “profaned” with some frequency (e.g., Exodus 31:14, on profaning the Sabbath) but “profane” as a noun describing a space is use only a handful of…
An angel with a stamp comes from the rising sun, ready to mark the foreheads of 144,000 of God’s bondservants (Revelation 7:3). That’s just the spot where Aaron and the other high priests were marked: “Holy to Yahweh” was engraved on the golden blossom at the front of the priest’s…
Robert Jenson is a profound theologian. He is also a spritely essayist. The essay may in fact be his genre of choice. Cascade has just released a compilation of these essays under the Jensonian title, Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics . Most of the essays are fairly recent, but it’s rather…
Every spring, basketball takes over my life for several weeks. I still function: I continue to do those things I tell my kids constitutes my “work.” I eat, sleep, talk, teach, write. But for a few weeks baseketball is my life. A Brazilian friend went through something similar recently -…
Next door, my friend Gerald McDermott responds to my piece on tradition with a brief exposition of Newman’s theory of the development of doctrine. Gerry is right that I agree with a lot of what Newman has to say about tradition and development, and the corruptions that Newman protested were…
The following is a response from Gerry McDermott to my response to his response to my essay. The remainder of this post is from Gerry: I agree that Newman’s “continuity of principle” can be slippery in application. The question begged is indeed, “Who decides”? Which makes the question all the…
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