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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Reformed theology has always stressed the utter sovereignty of God. He has planned all things, and works all things. But in certain forms of Reformed theology, this is subtly undermined and turns into its opposite. I’m thinking of Reformed theology (a hyper-Calvinist tendency) that so stresses God’s sovereignty that it…
Over at Grantland , Wesley Morris traces the shift in romantic comedy in the 1980s to the politicization of the genre: “By the 1980s, romantic comedy had started to turn inward, away from fights between two equals. Women took center stage — unless the movie was Tootsie , in which…
Mark tells us in a parenthetical aside that Jesus purged all meats, and Peter saw a vision that taught him that he could eat anything (Acts 10-11). Still, as Allen Frantzen details in his recent Food, Eating, and Identity in Early Medieval England , Western Christians continued to observe purity…
Gabriella Coleman has done field work on the group “Anonymous,” and argues in Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy that the group is not violent or dangerous. They’re only out for laughs, laughs of a particular kind indicated by the term lulz, which Coleman defines as “a deviant style of humor and…
Moses tells Pharaoh that Israel has to leave Egypt to perform their sacrifice before Yahweh because what they intend to do is abominable to the Egyptians. Why would it be abominable? For starters, bulls were divine - or at least mediated gods - to the Egyptians. Not appropriate for slaughter.…
Science and faith seem to be at odds. Many have suggested that’s because believers look to faith to do thing faith can’t do; if we adjusted our expectations about what kind of truth religion gives, science would be freed from the annoyances of the faithful, Tom McLeish ( Faith and…
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