Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A while back a friend told me that his church had finally introduced weekly communion. He told me that they were having an 8:00 a.m. service on Sundays for anyone who wanted to have communion. At present only about five people were coming to this service, but he was hopeful…
According to James B. Jordan’s outline of Deuteronomy, the first commandment section runs from 6:1 to 11:32, and the second commandment section begins with 12:1. 1 That this division of the text is sound is confirmed by a comparison of 6:1 with 12:1. Deuteronomy 6:1 announces that "this is the…
Calling Jerusalem the "holy city" comes so naturally to Christians that it comes as something of a surprise to realize how infrequently the phrase is used in Scripture. Not only is Jerusalem rarely called holy, but in the Old Testament this classification is found only in texts that refer to…
Nicodemus’s conversation with Jesus in John 3:1-15 is often regarded as an illustration of the tremendous stupidity of the Jews of our Lord’s day. Those who take the passage this way fail to recognize the profound nature of Nicodemus’s questions and of Jesus’ answers. In verse 3, Jesus tells Nicodemus…
In his book 1994? , Harold Camping asserts that the life spans of the primeval patriarchs of Genesis 5 & 11 were actually epochs, one after another. This together with other mistakes in interpretation yields for him a creation date of 11013 B.C. From here, Camping tries to work out…
I have received a number of letters asking for my comments on this difficult passage. Here is my best shot! 2. Now I praise you because you remember me in everything, and hold firmly to the traditions, just as I delivered them to you. This statement opens a new section…
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Paul's sermons in Acts 13 and 17 both employ language connected with the theme of justification that occupies so much attention in Romans and Galatians. Yet Paul uses the same concepts and terminology in ways that don't seem to fit his usage in the epistles. In Acts 13:38-39, he tells…
In her book on Common Prayer , Ramie Targoff claims that “What emerges in the aftermath of the Reformation is less a triumphant embrace of the individual's private and individual self than a concerted effort to shape the otherwise uncontrollable and unreliable internal sphere through common acts of devotion” (6).…
The genealogy of Levi is at the center of the genealogical section of 1 Chronicles. The genealogy begins with Adam and reaches ahead to the restoration from exile. In short, the genealogies survey all of human history, and, with the Levites at the center, it's as if the human race…
Early on in David Downs's study of Alms and atonement in early Christianity, he offers this striking quotation from Basil. He urges his hearers to keep the commandment to feed the hungry “as you would take hold of a fugitive, securing it from all sides with grasping hands and encircling…
Theological investigations of Naziism are often dogged by “a subtle methodological difficulty,” writes Paul Hinlicky in Before Auschwitz (2): “the ‘retrospective fallacy,' sometimes also called ‘presentism.'” As Hinlicky explains, “Unlike the historical actors in church and society during the 1920s and 1930s in Germany, our inquiry benefits from certain knowledge…
Paul's criticism of idols in his Athens speech repeats philosophical commonplaces about the nature of God and the difference between God and images, commonplaces as old as Plato and as contemporary as Seneca. But they were philosophical commonplaces. Lane Fox has pointed out that the philosophical skepticism about images was…
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