Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Christmas is a joyful season, but for many it turns into something else. Instead of joy, it is full of disappointment and unhappiness. Instead of an occasion for family fellowship, it becomes an opportunity for opening old wounds, reigniting old arguments, giving new life to rancor that should have died…
The Temple of Time The “covenant-literary matrix” of the Bible is not a pattern imposed upon the text, but the internal logic of its arrangement. This fundamental structure, functioning at multiple levels simultaneously, is a ceaseless reiteration of God’s primary theme. It is an algorithm forged in the furnace of…
In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Exodus, Solomon began to build the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. [1] That the author of Kings should date the start of the building of the temple from the Exodus is noteworthy. In Exodus 15:17, in Moses’ song following the…
Philip Schaff, a German Reformed theologian, states in The Principle of Protestantism that the material principle of Protestantism is “the doctrine of the justification of the sinner before God by the merit of Christ alone through faith.” This is the core message of the Church which leads “to the abandonment…
“Religion” is an attempt to create or build a tower with a top, or to build a temple that is self-contained. The story of The Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 is the story of mankind’s attempt to create a world that is self-contained and does not need God. All…
In the first essay in this series, I presented a case for dating Matthew before AD 70, contrary to the present scholarly consensus. In this essay, I intend to present cultural, personal, ecclesiological, and theological arguments for a very early date for Matthew. [1] The cultural argument concerns literacy in…
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B rad Littlejohn presents a number of criticisms of my account of penal substitution in Delivered from the Elements of the World . I won’t attempt to address all of them, but focus—at once too briefly and at tedious length—on Brad’s central substantive question, which concerns guilt and Jesus’ guilt-bearing.…
I ’ve been reading commentaries on Revelation 1:12–20, learning a great deal, but getting increasingly frustrated. Even the best commentators sometimes fall into the twin faults of contemporary interpretation—atomization and abstraction. Let’s take the “robe” that Jesus wears. Many have suggested that the robe designates Jesus as a priest, but…
I n his Anchor Bible commentary on Revelation , Craig Koester says this about John's initial vision of Jesus: “ The figure’s appearance defies easy description: hair that is white like wool or snow, eyes like a flame of fire, a voice like rushing water, a face like the sun.…
I n a contribution to Harold Bloom’s collection of essays on Macbeth , Robert Lanier Reid observes that ” Interpreters of Macbeth have focused almost exclusively on the first murder, the killing of a king in Acts 1–2, as the basis for understanding the play—its social, psychological, and metaphysical meanings.…
“W hat purpose do the Weird Sisters have for confronting the hero—or what is their masters’ purpose, if they in fact have such masters?” asks Susan Snyder in her contribution to Macbeth . She doesn’t think the play gives a clear answer, and she adds that the play doesn’t explain…
P eter Milward writes of “meta-drama” in Hamlet and Macbeth in his contribution Shakespeare’s Christianity . He argues (unconvincingly) that Shakespeare had in mind the situation of recusant Catholics in England. Milward’s analysis of the biblical features of the play is more compelling. He notes that “already from the opening…
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