Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Stories, frankly all human stories are practically always about one thing aren’t they? Death. The inevitability of death. . . . “There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that happens to man is ever natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must…
Matthew is organized around 5 discourses, which trace out the history of Jesus as a recapitulation of the history of God and Israel in the Old Testament. Jesus first speaks as a new Moses, instructing His disciples on a mountain about a righteousness that surpasses the righteousness of the scribes…
The fall of the Sethites in Genesis 6 is the third fall of mankind, or the third degree of Adam’s original fall. Adam sinned in a Garden against his Father by stealing something he was supposed to wait to obtain. (“Every tree shall be food for you” Genesis 1:29.) Cain…
The recent fantasy film Noah and a slightly related blog comment by my friend Douglas Wilson have stirred up again the question of whether the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 who married the “daughters of men” were fallen angels or the priestly line of Seth. Doug argues for angels,…
The prophecy of Jude concerns apostasy. An illustration of apostasy and its consequences is found in verse 6, which the New American Standard Bible translates this way: "And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for…
At His death, Jesus is surrounded by a Roman centurion and his cohort of Gentile solders. Matthew doesn't say that any disciples are there. But women are, and so is Joseph of Arimathea, identified as a “disciple” but, as John tells us, a “secret disciple for fear of the Jews,”…
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What’s needed is not a general hermeneutics developed from some philosophy of language or metaphysics. Rather, what’s needed is a general hermeneutics developed from the premise that NT readings of the OT do not represent some bizarre exception to the normal way of reading but provide a model for all…
Ecclesiastes 3:14: I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him. We saw in the sermon this morning that God has designed the world so…
God is the lead partner in the dance of life; we’re called to follow Him gracefully. But we don’t know whether it’s a waltz or the Charleston, and we don’t know what the next step will be. God is singing the melody that we are supposed to harmonize; but we…
God’s people are a missionary people, and this is not true only of the New Testament church. God called Abraham to bless the Gentiles through him, and one of Israel’s recurring sins was her failure to carry out this mission. Israel was supposed evoke praise from the Gentiles, but instead…
Trollope makes a neat Girardian point in Barchester Towers: “Wise people, when they are in the wrong, always put themselves in the right by finding fault with the people against whom they have sinned.”
In Missional Church (1998; edited by Darrell Guder), Craig Van Gelder offers a helpful summary of the various meanings of postmodernism: 1) Economic: For Frederic Jameson and others, postmodernism is marked primarily by a shift to a globalized and consumer-oriented form of capitalism: “In the postmodern condition, all of life…
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