Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Malachi Martin, The Keys of This Blood: The Struggle for World Dominion Between Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev & the Capitalist West (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990). Reviewed by Peter J. Leithart. The subtitle of this massive volume gives a good idea of its major theme. Martin, the…
The Abomination of Desolation: PART 1 The Abomination of Desolation: PART 2 What I intend to do in this series of studies is this: First, in the present essay we shall survey the occurrences of the Abomination of Desolation in the Bible in a cursory way, in order to get…
We previously surveyed what is meant by the abomination of desolation . We suggested that it refers to sacrilegious acts performed by the religious leaders of Israel, captained by their High Priest, right in front of God’s face in the Temple. Later studies in this series will provide evidence for…
Throughout history, the Christian Church has had to guard against the heresy of gnosticism. Gnosticism is not an ordinary heresy, because it does not manifest itself as a set of defined beliefs. Rather, gnosticism is a tendency, a tendency to replace the historic facts of Christianity with philosophical ideas. Gnosticism…
In Rite Reasons Nos. 9-12, I discussed the errors of Roman Catholicism, Anglo-Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. I have had several requests to comment further on the so-called Seventh Ecumenical Council, held at Nicaea in A.D. 787. That Council ordered the excommunication of anyone who rejects the veneration of icons. 1…
The drink offering or libation ( nesek ) is mentioned in only three places in the book of Leviticus. When the sheaf of the firstfruits was waved before the Lord, a grain offering was to be burned, along with "its libation, a fourth of a hin of wine [approx. one…
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Through much of Kings, the parallel of North and South has been deigned to emphasize the South’s apostasy. When the South becomes a mirror-image of the idolatrous North, it’s a sign of Judah’s doom. Here, the mirroring goes the other way: Yahweh’s faithfulness to David’s house is reflected in His…
Shakespeare’s Antony is an Aeneas who refuses to act piously by leaving his Dido and moving on to found Rome. Hence, in pursuit of Cleopatra he leaves Empire to Octavius, and Aeneas is split between the two of them. But Antony is also an Aeneas who will never be separated…
According to Deuteronomy 20, any man who had built a house, planted a vineyard, or married a wife without enjoying their benefits and joys was excused from military service. While it was certainly possible for a 20-year-old Israelite to be unmarried and propertyless, it would seem that the military was…
In his book on the Deuteronomistic history, Terence Fretheim notes the marked differences between God’s dealings with Israel and the expectations suggested by suzereignty treaties: “the historian makes it abundantly clear that God is not bound to react to the people in some schematic or univocal fashion. The relationship between…
Here’s a PhD thesis: What is going on, philosophically and theologically, in the transition from viewing Joshua-2 Kings as Former Prophets (Jewish tradition) to seeing them as Historical Books (evangelical) to seeing them as Deuteronomistic History (contemporary academic consensus). There’s a story to unpack there similar to the story that…
Jesus comes telling parables, so that seeing they might not see and hearing they might not understand. Yahweh does the same in Kings; He tells and enacts parables that are understood only by those who have received the wisdom that comes from God. It is, as with Jesus and Paul,…
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