Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In our first essay in this series ( part 1 ), we saw that Proverbs 30 opens with a puzzle, a cryptic sentence that challenges the reader to search out a matter in order to gain understanding. "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory…
The story of Hezekiah’s illness and recovery is familiar to every child who has attended Sunday School. Informed that he would die, faithful King Hezekiah pleaded in tears for a longer life. God heard his prayers and saw his tears, and promised fifteen more years. As a sign that He…
1. The Blessed Hope "Looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus." Titus 2:13 I was recently asked how I as a postmillennialist would preach on "The Blessed Hope." This is often a sticky question, because postmillennialists believe that…
1. Jeroboam and Ahab After Solomon died, the people came to his son, King Rehoboam, and asked for tax relief. Rehoboam refused to give it, and indeed told the people that he was going to tax them even more severely than his father had. At that point, with the blessing…
One aspect of truth is unity. It was Truth Incarnate who prayed for the unity of His people in John 17, which certainly makes unity a priority for them as well. In one sense, we know by faith that the Church is always invisibly unified in Christ, but there is…
Mr. Paul Miller of Vancouver writes that he is not persuaded by my remarks on Luke 4 on " The Son of Joseph ." He calls attention to Mark 6:1-6, where Jesus came "to His own part of the country," taught in the synagogue, and astonished many. The people said,…
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I n the course of a discussion of the “harmony” of the economy of grace, the great English Puritan John Owen remarks on the incomprehensible universal harmony of creation ( Doctrine of Justification by Faith , 55) : There is a harmony, a suitableness of one thing unto another, in…
W e may think that Jane Austen has only recently entered pop culture consciousness. We'd be wrong. Devoney Looser's The Making of Jane Austen traces Austen's fortunes between 1833, when her novels were republished, and 1975, the bicentenary of her birth. Looser examines book illustrations, dramatizations of the plays, political…
A s the title suggests, Jonathan Pennington's The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing sees the Sermon on the Mount as Jesus' instruction in a way of virtue and wisdom that leads to flourishing. As Pennington puts it, “Jesus provides in the Sermon a Christocentric, flourishing-oriented, kingdom-awaiting, eschatological wisdom…
I n The Sacredness of the Person , Hans Joas offers an “affirmative genealogy” of the notion of human rights. He traces the historical origins of the concept not, in Nietzchean fashion, to debunk, but to validate. Isolating the origins of a set of cultural values or practices need not,…
D avid Goldman argues that Trump sent “a clear message to America’s Muslim clients in Saudi Arabia: No more double games with non-state actors will be tolerated.” The double games have been going on a long time: “Saudi royal family members are funding every radical madrassa in Asia, including those…
I n Paul's letters, the verb “justify” (Gr. dikaioo ) means “acquit, judge favorably,” with overtones of forgiveness and reconciliation. It has an invariably positive meaning. Paul didn't learn to use “justify” that way from ancient or contemporary Greek. As James Prothro explains in a 2016 article, outside the Septuagint…
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