Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
WHAT IS THE OT PRECURSOR OF THE NT OFFICE OF PASTOR? HOW DOES THE FORMER ILLUMINATE THE LATTER? The first problem to address is: how do we know that there is an office of pastor in the New Testament? 1 Perhaps the way the question is put may permit me…
[This essay was originally published in December, 1981, in The Biblical Educator , a publication of the Institute for Christian Economics, and again with slight revisions in Contra Mundum 7 (Spring, 1993). It is reprinted here as a supplement to my book Creation in Six Days .] In 1979, Dr.…
Anyone seeking to reverse the meaning of this promise needs to come to grips not only with the phrase "God was with the lad" later on, but also with Hagar’s response in 16:13. She worships Yahweh, putting her trust in Him and obeying Him. In fact, Hagar is at the…
Ishmael is the narrator of Melville’s fantasy-romance Moby Dick. Melville takes up the traditional view of Ishmael as a wayward son of Abraham, driven out solely because of the Divine "caprice" of election, an angry man with his hand raised against all other men. He is a fitting "anti-hero," or…
There were five cities at the center of the Canaanite culture in the circle of the Jordan, a place like the Garden of Eden, like the land of Egypt, before it became the Dead Sea at the destruction of the cities (Genesis 13:10). Genesis 14:2 tells us their names: Sodom,…
Meditations by James B. Jordan Genesis 19, the destruction of Sodom and the rescue of Lot, is part two of a story that begins in Genesis 18. These two chapters happen in one 24-hour period: noon and evening in Mamre, and midnight and daybreak in Sodom. God and two angels…
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It’s one of those things everyone knows: The Bible talks a lot about falling stars. It turns out it’s one of those things that everyone knows but is wrong. There’s a single fallen star in Isaiah 14:12. Stars lose their brightness in various places (Ezekiel 32:7; Joel 2:109; 3:15). But…
As the title suggests, Miles Unger’s Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces tells the life story of Michelangelo through six of his great works, including his Pieta , the David statue, the Sistine chapel. As masterful as those works were, and as much as the impressed themselves on the future…
J ohn O’Malley’s The Jesuits tells the complex story of the author’s order in a brief 160 pages. The small space lends focus, and O’Malley highlights the innovations and contributions of the Society of Jesus. Ignatius’s decision to focus on education for lay students gave the Jesuits a profile unlike…
Social trinitarianism has been on its heels in recent years, but in a bracing article in IJST , Gijsbert van den Brink of the Free University of Amsterdam thinks it can respond to the varied criticisms. It needs to be chastened and modified at points, but for van den Brink…
Jenson gives a wonderfully curmudgeonly riposte to the critics of critics of Augustine ( The Theology of Colin Gunton , 11-12). “Whether long books or short articles, all display the same pattern: ‘But just look at these other things that Augustine said about God’s triunity . . . and aknowledge…
Genesis 6:8 says that Noah “found favor in the eyes of Yahweh.” In the following verse, we’re told that Noah was a righteous man ( tzadiyq ), blameless in his generations,” and this assessment is reiterated in 7:1, which records Yahweh’s statement, “you alone I have seen to be righteous…
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