Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I mentioned last month ( BH 82) in my essay "Like a Dove" that Genesis 8 is a recapitulation of Genesis 1. Let me explicate that assertion here. Of course, the world after the Flood is a new creation, so we may expect a recapitulation of the first creation. It…
The book of Esther is one of the most neglected of the books of the Bible. To be sure, sermons are preached on it, and commentaries have occasionally been written on it, but almost without exception Esther has been interpreted in isolation from the rest of Biblical history, chronology, and…
Dear Mr. ______, . . . Here is how I look at the geocentricity question. Since I don’t recall what I wrote you before, I may be repeating some things. 1. The Bible does not teach it. Biblical passages used to support the idea are being misinterpreted. My original paper…
Answer 4 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is often taken as a magnificent answer to the question, "What is God?" It reads: "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." Presbyterians are fond of praising this statement, preaching on it,…
The gospels tell us that at Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him "in bodily form like a dove" (Luke 3:22 & parallels). Biblically sensitive commentators have associated this event with three Old Testament parallels: (1) the hovering of the Spirit over the creation in Genesis 1:2; (2) the…
This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. (John 8:6) The story of the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:11) has been part of the canonical Christian Bible from its earliest…
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James Kugel lays out four assumptions about Scripture shared by Bible readers in the early centuries of the church ( Traditions of the Bible , 15-19): First, “the Bible is a fundamentally cryptic document. That is, all interpreters are fond of maintaining that although Scripture may appear to be saying…
In a 2005 New Yorker piece , David Remnick surveyed the efforts to bring Dostoevsky and Tolstoy into English. For decades, the field was dominated by the translations of Constance Garnett. They were far from universally liked. Nabokov “ranks Tolstoy at the top of all Russian prose writers and Anna…
Yahweh descended from Sinai to take up residence in the tabernacle, to make His home in the midst of His people. Though access to His house was limited, He intended the tabernacle to be a house of hospitality. In the house were a table of showbread for food, a lampstand…
In the March 2016 print edition of First Things , RR Reno explains the limits of “critical thinking,” often offered as “an intellectual cure-all for what limits our desire to know.” Reno acknowledges that “The critical strategy for renewing the intellectual life can seem exactly the right way to tear…
I admit a bias at the outset: In 20008, the US elected a President younger than I, and I now find myself older than many leaders in DC, older than many of the writers, columnists and scholars that I learn from. It's hard to adjust to the fact that “old”…
Early Christians expended huge amounts of energy and intellectual subtlety in working out the implications of the gospel for their understanding of God and of Jesus. “Trinity” and “Christology” were the theological monuments of the patristic era. John MacIntyre ( Shape of Soteriology ) points out that we find nothing…
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