Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
When I wrote my commentary on Ecclesiastes A Table in the Mist I took Eccl. 11:1-2 as a reference to the risk of international trade. It sure did seem to me like a reference to Solomon’s risky trade with other nations. Israel exported grain (bread) and Solomon’s ships returned to…
When we read an alphabetical psalm in English, we miss the fact that each verse begins with a new letter of the Hebrew alphabet. I have found one way to get around this, which is for the leader to announce something relevant about each letter before reading his half of…
How does the Lord’s Supper proclaim the death of Jesus until He comes? (1 Corinthians 11:26). Historically, liturgists have attempted to locate some act in the rite of the Supper that corresponds to the death of Jesus: the fraction (breaking of bread), or the fact that bread and wine are…
These notes are posted here by request. We all now live in the age of slob worship thanks to the “sixties.” I never experienced sitting for prayer until 20 years ago. Jesus was unhappy when His disciples could not watch and pray for one hour. Today’s slob Christians complain if…
On September 11, 2001, Jesus brought judgment upon the United States of America. Following His normal procedure, He used an even more evil force to do it (Habakkuk 1-3). The warning Jesus gives throughout the Bible to those He uses to punish others is that they need to repent, or…
Because of Donald Trump, the “Birther” issue is heating up. It is not going away, and is only part of a larger cluster of issues in regard to the President. Virtually all of the relevant documents concerning who he is and where he has been, have been suppressed, at great…
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Typology was a traditional method of reading Scripture, one that persisted into the Victorian age. Most obviously, this took the traditional form of finding shadowy figures of Christ in Old Testament characters and institutions and promises. J.C. Ryle, a leading Evangelical Anglican, claimed that one “golden chain” runs through the…
Philosophers sometimes restrict “knowledge” to verifiable facts, logical inferences, statements, theories. In fact, knowing goes on all the time, in many modes and manners. As Esther Meek puts it, our lives are a tapestry of acts of knowing. Our knowing is nestled within God’s knowing. Our acts of knowing occur…
You are my witnesses, the Lord tells Israel. You will be my witnesses, Jesus tells the apostles before His ascension. All Christians are witnesses, "martyrs" in the original sense of the word. All Christians are also called to be "martyrs" in the more developed sense: We are all called to…
Brian Stanley ( Christianity in the Twentieth Century ) is aware that the "Bible is the fountainhead of all Christian traditions," perennially central to the church's life. But he suggests that "the twentieth century may have a better claim than any other to be labeled the century of the Bible"…
Modern epistemology operates, Charles Taylor argues ( A Secular Age ); he covers some of the same ground in Retrieving Realism ), within a "closed world system" (CWS). CWS describes the various "ways of restricting our grasp of things which are not recognized as such" (551). When one operates within…
The horsemen who are summoned by the living creatures in Revelation 6 are known as “horsemen of the Apocalypse." This is what they are, technically, since they are horsemen and they appear in a book called “the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ.” But usually that phrase implies something more: these horsemen,…
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