Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
There is nothing good Satan cannot pervert, and that fact extends to the Christian public witness against abortion just as it applies to everything else. As a Christian who has written, marched, and picketed against legalized abortion since 1970, I have been saddened to see the development of the anti-Christ…
(We are discussing the meaning of the phrase "cutting off of days" in Genesis 4:3, showing that it implies the turn of the year in autumn.) Two passages use the term "cutting off of years" to refer to the lunar year, beginning in the Spring. Exodus 12:41 – at the…
In the second year of Darius, near the end of the feast of booths, the prophet Haggai encouraged the Jews of the restoration to continue their work on the temple by assuring them that “the latter glory of this house will be greater than then former” (Hag. 2:9). To this…
G. K. Chesterton began Orthodoxy by describing the plot of a book that he had never written. Taking a page from Chesterton, below I will briefly map out the territory of a book (or books) that need(s) to be written. Had I but world enough and time–and a small army…
As long as Moses lived, Israel seldom worshipped other gods directly. She broke the First Word by breaking the Second, worshipping God through the calf. As we shall see, God always treats such Liturgical Idolatry as Covenantal Idolatry, but it is far more serious because it is committed by those…
In response to my article, " The Holy City " (in Biblical Horizons 55) James B. Jordan has made several suggestions about how I might expand on the ideas presented there. Several other readers have also contributed their insights. Below, I trace a few sketchy lines of thought. 1. The…
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Deuteronomy 6 is the closest thing the Old Testament has to a confession of faith: “Hear, O Israel, Yahweh your God, Yahweh is one” (v. 4). That isn't merely a “doctrinal” confession. The text immediately goes on to exhort those who confess the one God to love that one God…
The land of promise is not a land like Egypt, and when Moses describes the differences between them he focuses on hydraulics. Egypt draws its water from below, pumped with a foot pump from the Nile. Canaan, though, lives off heavenly rain, the waters above, water that comes from Yahweh…
It would seem that a major schism would so weaken the church that it would be ill-suited to major expansion and growth. So it might seem. In his contribution to Sacred Schisms , however, Joseph Bryant argues that the third-century schism between the Catholic and Katharoi factions actually facilitated the…
Moses is typically depicted in modern scholarship as a prophet. There is reason for that, but in his monograph on Royal Motifs in the Pentateuchal Portrayal of Moses , Danny Mathews argues that the Pentateuch surrounds Moses with various royal symbolisms as well. He points to Deuteronomy 33:4-5, “Moses charged…
When Franco Basaglia took over the Gorizia asylum in 1961, it reminded him of his time in a fascist prison back in 1944. The stench of death and shit was overwhelming, and it made Basaglia physically ill. According to John Foot's The Man Who Closed the Asylums , it was…
Marilynne Robinson has some sobering things to say about Christianity, America, and fear. She starts from the premise, by no means universally accepted in the world of the New York Review of Books , that “America is a Christian country.” From this she formulates a two-part thesis: “first, contemporary America…
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