Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Why was Abel’s offering approved and Cain’s rejected? This question has been debated for many centuries. Some have argued that Cain’s offering was rejected because it was not a bloody offering; others that Cain’s offering was rejected because it was not from the firstfruits; others that Cain’s offering was rejected…
Last year I had occasion to work through the book of Luke as I did some work for one of my editorial clients, and this year my pastor has been preaching through Luke. Thus, I have twice been reminded of the Parable of the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1-13), a parable…
We come now to what some have called the "Gordian Knot" of Biblical chronology: the period of the kings of Israel and Judah. We do not have a summary figure that tells exactly how long this period of time was. The book of Kings provides the years each king reigned,…
In an earlier article , while examining the biblical symbolism of dew, I noted the parallel in Psalm 133 between the dew upon Mount Hermon and the oil poured upon the head of Aaron. Both the dew of Hermon and the oil of ordination are compared to the pleasantness of…
The Covenantal Gospel was the last book written by the remarkable South African theologian and exegete Cornelius van der Waal. Two other works of van der Waal’s have been translated: Hal Lindsey and Biblical Prophecy , and Search the Scriptures . Because this book was written in 1979, it does…
A year or so ago, my wife and I were invited to a Christian school in order to preview a film on drug abuse that was going to be shown to our children. One of the children in this film turned out, of course, to be using drugs. This child’s…
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Early in Ward’s book, he surveys mid sixteenth-century treatments of the effects of Adam’s sin, mainly to determine whether writers of that period conceived of God’s relationship with Adam as a covenantal one. His evidence suggests several important conclusions: 1) The early Protestant confessions do not describe Adam’s relationship to…
In his very useful study, God & Adam: Reformed Theology and the Creation Covenant , Rowland S. Ward has this to say about Meredith Kline’s views on the un-gracious character of the covenant of works: “Contrary to his position in 1968, Kline does not wish now to admit any concept…
I should clarify my final, hurried comments on Brown’s discussion of sin and bad taste. I suggested at the end of the last post that Brown’s initial mapping of the problem contributes to an unsatisfying conclusion regarding moral and aesthetic judgment. Brown argues that taste is community-specific, and thus subject…
One of the challenges of a Christian aesthetics is sorting through the connections and distinctions between holiness and good taste on the one hand, and sin and bad taste on the other. In his 1989 book, Religious Aesthetics , Frank Burch Brown offers some thoughtful reflections on this question. Here…
Don Richardson’s Peace Child is a classic of modern mission writing. In that book, Richardson tells of his experience among the Sawi people of New Guinea, and how he used their traditional custom of exchanging a “peace child” between warring tribes to explain the gospel to them. In his 1981…
When the men of Babel organize to build a tower reaching to heaven, they decide to use “tar for mortar” (Gen 11:3; NASB). The Hebrew phrase repeats two different forms of the same root word (CHMR): The word for “tar” is CHEMAR and the word for “mortar” is CHOMER. They…
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