Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The drink offering or libation ( nesek ) is mentioned in only three places in the book of Leviticus. When the sheaf of the firstfruits was waved before the Lord, a grain offering was to be burned, along with "its libation, a fourth of a hin of wine [approx. one…
When I became a Calvinist it wasn't long before I learned that John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ was regarded as the masterful treatise on what is known as "Limited Atonement"--the "L" in the TULIP mnemonic device for "the five points of Calvinism." This wasn't…
One of the advantages of paying very close attention to the details in the Bible, especially chronological and genealogical details, is that they can shed light on situations that don’t seem to make much sense apart from them. One such situation is that of Bathsheba. It appears that Bathsheba willingly…
The Feast of Ingathering in the seventh month of the Sinaitic calendar is also called the Feast of Sukkoth, of Booths, also called Feast of Tabernacles. I have usually called it by that last phrase, and it is the most common today; but there is a problem: A tabernacle is…
When Matthew’s Gospel was first read aloud to the fledgling Christian congregations, the experience must have been like seeing the words “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” appear afresh on cinema screens in 1999. Yet, unlike The Phantom Menace, the New Testament did not disappoint. Why?…
Fragmentation and integration are phenomena which artist Makoto Fujimura feels bodily, and about which he is concerned profoundly. What do these mean for him? How may we draw his insights into this ongoing consideration—itself integrative—of integration in a fragmented world? Thus far I have been acquainting you with matters already…
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The thesis of Kevin Kruse's One Nation Under God is that “the postwar revolution in America's religious identity had its roots not in the foreign policy panic of the 1950s but rather in the domestic politics of the 1930s and early 1940s. Decades before Eisenhower's inaugural prayers, corporate titans enlisted…
Matthew Levering presents a typically careful, judicious summary of David Novak's analysis of supersessionism in his Christian-Jewish Dialogue and the Life of Wisdom . Along the way he points out (following Novak) that even Christian rejection of “harsh supersessionism” (which claims that Jews have no continuing covenantal status) doesn't overcome…
In a contribution to Judaism and Christianity , Evan Zuesse questions how H. Richard Niebuhr's analysis of Christ and culture might apply to Judaism. While he recognizes that Jewish responses to culture fit roughly into Niebuhr's categories, he finds that the whole set-up doesn't stand up to close analysis: “if…
Yahweh descends on Sinai surrounded by a fiery cloud, full of thunder and lightning. When we get a closer look at the cloud, as we do in Ezekiel, we realize that it is a cloud of angels. Yahweh moves about surrounded by the fiery horses and chariots of His hosts.…
Patrick Deneen nails it next door at the main First Things site. Read the whole article, but here are a few money quote:s “The decision by corporate leaders to take a political stand over a controversial issue is therefore of great interest. Corporations and business leaders almost always avoid political…
In his commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians , JB Lightfoot ran through the possible meanings of ta sitgmata , the “brand marks of Christ” that Paul says he bore (Galatians 6:17). Stigmata marked “domestic slaves. With these, however, branding was not usual, at least among Greeks and…
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