Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the Bible, fatness is such a blessing, that it is especially hard to understand why wicked men are permitted to enjoy such a state. It requires a theodicy and faith in God. Thus: “For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek . They are…
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The allusion to the Exodus story is contained in the first words of Deuteronomy 14:1 — “ye are the sons of Yahweh your God” — as well as in 14:2 in the use of the technical term translated “treasured possession,” “His own possession,” “peculiar people,” “precious people,” and so forth.…
I have argued that Deuteronomy 14:1-21 is an independent literary unit that applies the Third Word to the lives of Israelites from the time of Moses and Joshua. In this short pericope, Moses suggests broad and deep meaning by means of literary allusion to the stories of the creation and…
In his recently republished The New Creation , the late, delightful Herbert McCabe defends the priesthood of the plebs as roundly as anyone could want. Citing Hebrews, he claims that "there is an essential difference between the Christian community and the community of the Old Law, or any other religious…
Augustine famously prayed, “Our hearts our restless until they rest in You.” True indeed. Being creatures, we inherently sense our ontological poverty—our innate condition of dependence—and are compelled to find a sense of security. And it is also true—as Augustine’s own narrative painfully illustrates—that one of the things we most…
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Isaiah 56 begins with an exhortation concerning justice. In parallel phrases, Yahweh instructs Israel to “guard judgment” ( mishpat ) and to “do justice” ( zedaqah ). Along with God’s statutes and commandments, His judgments are to by guarded (Leviticus 18:5, 28; 25:18). “Guarding” judgment suggests a conservative, protective, preserving…
What’s The Trouble With Physics ? asks Lee Smolin. The answer has something to do with the absence of diversity within the scientific community (xxii): “Science requires a delicate balance between conformity and variety. Because it is so easy to fool ourselves, because the answers are unknown, experts, no matter…
According to Robert Sparling’s account in Johann Georg Hamann and the Enlightenment Project (145), Moses Mendelssohn considered human beings to be isolated individuals. Language is a tool used by these isolated individuals to connect concepts in our head to things in the world. Speech involves assembling little bundles of signs…
Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ is largely a defense of definite atonement against the hypothetical universalists of his day (see Jonathan Moore’s English Hypothetical Universalism: John Preston and the Softening of Reformed Theology ). Owen argues that there is an inseparable connection between Christ’s death…
I am not convinced by the texts Owen cites in defense of the notion of a “covenant of redemption,” a “compact” between Father and Son “concerning the work to be undertaken, and the issue or event thereof” ( The Death of Death in the Death of Christ ). But the…
Means are designed to serve ends, and John Owen ( The Death of Death in the Death of Christ ) says that the means are of two sorts. Some are good in themselves without any reference to the means. Others “have no good at all in any kind, as in…
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