Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Introduction Isaiah 21 can only be understood in the light of its placement in the architecture of the second “volume” of the prophecy (chapters 13–27). The contents are arranged in twin sevenfold “columns” that represent the great bronze pillars of Solomon’s Temple: Jachin and Boaz, priest and king. The priestly…
A Biblical Reflection on the Purpose of the Constellations The starry heavens hold a place of wonder in the hearts of men. Since man’s creation we have looked up into the heavens and have beheld its glory. This is particularly true of the night sky. The stars, in their shinning…
The case for there being five discourses within the Gospel according to Matthew is a hard one to challenge: surely the closing formula “when Jesus finished these sayings” as found in 8:1, 11:1, 13:53, 19:1, and 26:1 settles it once and for all. And by the five instances of the…
The Long Commission The Great Commission of Matthew 28 has long been a cornerstone of American Evangelicalism. It has formed and fashioned the American church’s missional impulse. Yet when viewed from the wide lens of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, the Great Commission is revealed as one of the pillars…
I am delighted to see that more and more churches in the Reformed tradition are now recognizing that all baptized children are members of the body of Christ and therefore ought to be communing with the rest of the body at the Lord’s Table. This has been decades in the…
Good leaders have always been rare. In today’s world, they seem extinct. Joe Rigney’s recent book Leadership and Emotional Sabotage digs into the spiritual reasons for the leadership epidemic and recommends cures. Rigney starts with a summary of a book by Edwin Friedman called A Failure of Nerve . Friedman’s…
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Joshua Appel, pastoral assistant at Trinity Reformed Church, informs me that Aquinas’ argument from motion is not what many (including me) think it is. It is not an argument that God is the first domino in the line; rather, it is an argument that God is the universal magnet, the…
Barth has some excellent things to say about the Filioque (CD 1.1, 477ff): 1) He notes that Greek theologians as late as the 5th century explicitly affirmed the filioque. 2) He argues compellingly that the original form of the creed not only does not exclude the filioque. The procession of…
Calvin intriguingly says that the Spirit is the power of persistence and growth and life in creation: not merely the agent for the formation of things, but for their persistence. Spirit ensures the temporal endurance of the creature. As Barth summarizes, ?Both the existence of things, created for as chaos…
Barth argues that the Third Article of the Creed had to be finished before the church could truly wrestle with the doctrine of grace: ?It is logical that this doctrine [of the Spirit] had to be the last stage in the development of the trinitarian dogma. It had to be…
1 Kings 15-16 are a schoolboy’s nightmare. A king rises, a king reigns, a king sins, a king dies. Then his son rises, his son reigns, his son sins, and his son dies. And so on and on, indistinguishable kings with nearly indistinguishable reigns. Baasha’s dynasty repeats Jeroboam’s. And it’s…
Adherents to some form of the New Perspective on Paul are notorious for saying that the Catholic opponents of the Reformers were significantly different from the Jewish opponents of Paul, and that the issues Paul dealt with were not those of the Protestant Reformation. Reformers, on this view, addressed works…
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