Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
One evening at dusk two men met under a portico near the North wall in Jerusalem. They greeted one another cordially and sat down on a stone bench. They were both Pharisees. One of the men appeared to be uncomfortable and kept looking around nervously. The other said, “Don’t worry,…
John Williamson Nevin’s Controversy With Charles Hodge Over the Imputation of Adam’s Sin (with a Comparison to Robert L. Dabney) If one is blessed to discover George P. Hutchinsons’s monograph on Original Sin in nineteenth-century Reformed thought, 1 no student of American presbyterianism can fail to be fascinated. What once…
If you stop people on the street and ask them, “Where is God?” you’ll get a range of responses from a vague sense that He’s “up there somewhere” to a generic omnipresence (and it goes downhill from there!) What God does in Acts 2 challenges us to develop and apply…
Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as…
John Walton believes that modern Christians have lost multiple worlds: The Lost World of Genesis One; The Lost World of Adam and Eve; The Lost World of Scripture; The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest; The Lost World of the Flood; The Lost World of the Torah. I believe this…
How should the church respond to the pandemic? N.T. Wright has written a book which searches the depths of Scripture to answer this question. Our challenge is that we do not yet understand the pandemic, at least not with any degree of consensus. We don't know whose fault it is,…
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Yahweh’s name is His name is supposed to be continuously ( tamid ) praised, but it is blasphemed (or “provoked”) continuously ( tamid ; Isaiah 52:5). Yahweh continues: “Therefore My people shall know My name” (v. 6). How “therefore”? How will Israel know Yahweh’s blasphemed name? The answer is found…
Yahweh calls Zion to shake off her dust (Isaiah 52:2). Dust is the place of mourning; Zion sits in dust and ashes. Adam was made from dust, and in death returned to dust; dust is the grave, and Zion is a new Eve, called out of the grave to rise…
Yahweh calls Zion from her sleep and excitedly orders her to get dressed (Isaiah 52:1). Like the call to “Awake! Awake!” the order to put on clothes is doubled: Clothe yourself with strength, Zion. Clothe yourself in garments of beauty, Jerusalem. Two observations: First, the call to be clothed in…
Arendt has some sharp observations on the dangers of bureaucratization in On Violence (81): “Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and here all are equally powerless we have a…
Is it fitting for Jesus, who died so ignominiously, to be buried in splendor? Thomas has various answers to that question ( ST III, 51, 2), but I think the best answers are inherent to the literary structure and themes of the gospel, especially John. Matthew tells us that Joseph…
The notion that death can be life-giving doesn’t appear to make philosophical sense, Thomas notes ( ST III, 50, 6). Death is a privation of life, and a privation doesn’t have power to act. Therefore, no death, including Christ’s, has power to give life. Thomas admits that Christ’s death (as…
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