Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The god of Israel was not just any god. Two thousand years of Christian history, with it’s besetting philosophical temptations, and full-blown deist and transcendentalist and universalist problems, have obscured the fact that, in itself, the identity of the true god (or gods) cannot be predetermined, any more than the…
Jacob and Solomon God gave wealth and possessions to Jacob, and then threatened to take them all away at Peniel. Jacob wrestled with God, and through prayer Jacob saw through the crisis by faith and was made victor (Hosea 12:4). The Kingdom period in Israel concerns the same themes. We…
In our study of the historical impact and unfolding of the Ten Words of God, we now arrive at the Third Word. The Third Word prohibits hypocrisy, and when we realize this, we can see right away that disobeying the Third Word is closely tied to the situation of Israel…
Abraham and Joshua In our previous two essays, we considered aspects of the lives of Abraham and Jacob, as these display how God works with men in history. These two men carry in themselves all the future of Israel, so to speak, and their lives at the individual level correspond…
Part 5: Laying New Foundations in a Dying World (continued) Physical Training Though it is seldom recognized any more, the fact is that no liberal arts and no science is possible apart from peace, and peace is only possible if there is a strong military presence that protects a nation.…
Last month, in our essay " Patriarchal Dominion ," we observed the flow from Abraham to Jacob to Joseph. Our concern here is to advance our understanding of that narrative flow. I should mention that I am assuming much that is found in my book Primeval Saints: Studies in the…
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Between Revelation 6:16-17, which speak of the “wrath of the Lamb” and “the great day of their wrath,” and 11:18, which says that the wrath came against the enraged nations, there is no reference to the wrath ( orge ) of God. As the seals come to a conclusion, the…
“Dominion” has a bad rap these days. The creation mandate to “have dominion, fill, subdue, and rule” the earth is regarded with suspicion: It gives human beings religious justification for environmental rapacity, domination of the other, sexism and racism. The Bible recognizes this possibility. The first king in Scripture is…
Over the centuries, readers have assumed that Revelation was written in, or predicting, a period of intense persecution. Irenaeus seems to say that Revelation was written in the reign of Domitian, and commentators have gone to lengths to show that Domitian fits the profile of the beast. Scholars today widely…
Scientists are human. They need to communicate with each other. For centuries, science has been an international, now a global, enterprise. How do scientists communicate? Once, French was, well, the lingua franca , so dominant in the discourses of high culture and science of the late 18th century that even…
The action of Revelation 12-15 moves from the sky to earth to the sea and then back up. In 11:19, the temple of God in heaven is opened, revealing the heavenly ark. Then there is a sign in heaven, in the firmament where the sun, moon, and stars are, the…
Apocalypse is also supposed to describe a particular form of eschatology, particularly beliefs about the end of the world. This is the sense in which the word is used in Ernst Kasemann’s famous claim that apocalyptic is the mother of Christian theology. Kasemann meant that early Christians believed in the…
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