Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
5. Simeon and Levi: Brothers they destroyed. They treated violently their circumcised-covenant fellows. 6. "Into their counsel let not my soul enter. Into their assembly let not my glory join. For in their anger they killed a man, And in their pleasure they hamstrung an ox. 7. Cursed is their…
The fact that there is a "week" of seven kings over Edom, before we come to an eighth, hints that perhaps these have some link with the days of Genesis 1, especially as we find this list in the book of Genesis. Clearly the list of seven speaks of the…
Remember, whatever sins are committed by those with whom you are in covenant are your sins as well. You need to fear the judgment of God if you continue to be part of this denomination. I have recently discovered that the above rationalization is floating around cyberspace to justify breaking…
While Samuel’s mother Hannah prays at the tabernacle, the high priest Eli sees her lips moving silently and concludes that she is drunk (1 Samuel 1:13-14). Hannah protests that she has poured nothing into her, but is "pouring out" her soul before Yahweh; far from being giddy with wine, she…
For the record: I believe that those whom God effectually calls, he also freely justifies: not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone;…
Over the years, the ministry of Biblical Horizons has strongly advocated singing the psalms in worship. The Psalter is God’s hymnal, and we don’t need any prooftexts to know that as such, it should form the center of our praise to Him. To be sure, other hymns are permitted, just…
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A remarkable statement of Calvin’s, from Institutes 4.14.18: speaking of the tree of knowledge and of the rainbow, Calvin says that these are given new being by the word of God that designates them as signs or testimonies. Then this Et antea quidem arbor erat arbor, arcus arcus; ubi inscripta…
In Nussbaum’s treatment, “tragic” and “Aristotelian” conceptions of moral luck and the fragility of the good life are at one. In excluding poets, Plato not only kept certain forms of literature at bay, but was protecting against the tragic potential of life. For Plato, “the best and most valuable things…
Nussbaum’s problematic of moral luck is quite intriguing: A good man is like a tree, she says at the beginning, quoting Pindar. But that means that the good man is dependent for his flourishing on all kinds of things beyond his control ?Erainfall, winds, sun, and so on and on.…
Should theology agree with the sophist critique of nomos ? It would seem so, as Thomas would say: The institutions of society are the product of human construction, and the claim that they are rooted in “nature” is a rhetorical device. It is human all the way down. If it…
Years ago, I read David Landes’s Prometheus Unbound for a class in economic history, and I can still remember the fascination I experienced at his descriptions of the steel industry (though details are sadly forgotten). In his recent Wealth and Poverty of Nations , Landes, among many other things, spends…
There is further evidence concerning the meaning of nomos in Greek culture, coming from Martha Nussbaum’s Fragility of Goodness . In a discussion of Euripides’s Hecuba , Nussbaum points out that Polyxena, Hecuba’s daughter who is offered as a human sacrifice by the Greeks to appease the shade of Achilles,…
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