Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The sin of Ham in Genesis 9 continues to elicit comment, since it seems mysterious. We read in 9:21-23 that Noah uncovered himself inside (the covering of) his tent, that Ham (entered the privacy of Noah’s tent) and saw his father’s (not “Noah’s”, n.b.) nakedness, that Ham told his two…
Recently the magazine Tabletalk published a series of essays against Calvinist theologian N. T. Wright. The black cover of this issue lets us know just how dangerous this man is. But how dangerous is N. T. Wright? Well, he’s dangerous to some people, but not to others. Let’s see: He…
You need to read Rob Rayburn’s defense of his presbytery to the PCA SJC (Standing Judicial Committee). If you’ve been out of the loop on this, that’s okay. But what has happened in the last few years is that people have made accusations against Peter Leithart, and in response the…
What does it mean to read the Bible as inspired literature? The method is not new nor is it uncommon in Dutch Reformed circles. Exegesis must be Christocentric, plenary (all the text serves a theological purpose), respect the context in God’s redemptive plan, and plumb the full literary depth of…
Reading in John Calvin’s sermons on 2 Samuel today, I came across this wonderful statement. This comes from a sermon preached on July 3, 1562, “The True Worship of God,” an exposition of 2 Sam. 6:1-7. Calvin is discussing the implications of the affirmation that Yaweh, the God of Israel,…
A great deal of confusion about the relative value of “virginity” and marriage can be avoided if one pays careful attention to the text of Paul’s advice in 1 Corinthians 7. The two most important observations are: 1) that Paul’s specific recommendations are made because of the “impending crisis” (v.…
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INTRODUCTION This section of Proverbs 11 highlights several issues. The first two verses treat issues of honesty and dishonesty; verses 3-8 describe the security of the righteous. Verses 9-14 return to various concerns regarding the use of the tongue, which was a theme of the previous chapter. HONESTY AND HUMILITY…
James C. Cobb cites revealing statistics concerning the self-identification of blacks in the South: “In 1964, only 55 percent of southern black respondents expressed ‘warm’ feelings toward southerners, as opposed to nearly 90 percent of the southern white polled. By 1976, however, the proportion of southern blacks who expressed this…
Modernism, critic Richard Lehan writes, was built on the conception that the world was caught in a conflict between organicism and mechanism, between the feminine and masculine, or, as Henry Adams put it, between the dynamo and the virgin. Modernist writers can be classified by their responses to this division:…
Leviticus 18 describes sexual sin as occasions of exposure, as “uncovering nakedness.” At times, the nakedness is not only an individual’s, but is shared. The reason given for the prohibition of maternal incest in Lev 18:8 is that the mother’s nakedness is the “father’s nakedness.” This makes sense: In the…
Patrick Henry Reardon writes concerning the use of “tradition” in the NT (2 Thes 2:15 especially): “In this respect it is important, I believe, not to interject into Paul’s formula a later controversy between the Protestants and the Council of Trent. We observe that Paul does not distinguish between ‘Scripture…
In his Triune Creator, Colin Gunton offers this “argument” against reading Gen 1 as an account of six literal days of divine activity: “the sophistication and complexity of the writings make it clear that the authors, and that includes those who wrote the books in their canonical form, exclude -…
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