Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
WHAT IS THE OT PRECURSOR OF THE NT OFFICE OF PASTOR? HOW DOES THE FORMER ILLUMINATE THE LATTER? The first problem to address is: how do we know that there is an office of pastor in the New Testament? 1 Perhaps the way the question is put may permit me…
[This essay was originally published in December, 1981, in The Biblical Educator , a publication of the Institute for Christian Economics, and again with slight revisions in Contra Mundum 7 (Spring, 1993). It is reprinted here as a supplement to my book Creation in Six Days .] In 1979, Dr.…
Anyone seeking to reverse the meaning of this promise needs to come to grips not only with the phrase "God was with the lad" later on, but also with Hagar’s response in 16:13. She worships Yahweh, putting her trust in Him and obeying Him. In fact, Hagar is at the…
Ishmael is the narrator of Melville’s fantasy-romance Moby Dick. Melville takes up the traditional view of Ishmael as a wayward son of Abraham, driven out solely because of the Divine "caprice" of election, an angry man with his hand raised against all other men. He is a fitting "anti-hero," or…
There were five cities at the center of the Canaanite culture in the circle of the Jordan, a place like the Garden of Eden, like the land of Egypt, before it became the Dead Sea at the destruction of the cities (Genesis 13:10). Genesis 14:2 tells us their names: Sodom,…
Meditations by James B. Jordan Genesis 19, the destruction of Sodom and the rescue of Lot, is part two of a story that begins in Genesis 18. These two chapters happen in one 24-hour period: noon and evening in Mamre, and midnight and daybreak in Sodom. God and two angels…
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The New Testament contains a number of warnings about false prophets ( pseudoprophetes ), often in “apocalyptic” contexts (Matthew 24:11, 24; Mark 13:22; 2 Peter 2:1; 1 John 4:1). The link between false prophecy and crisis goes back to Jeremiah. As the Babylonian threat against Judah rises, false prophets appear,…
“Touch not my anointed, and do my prophets no harm.” That is how Psalm 105:15 summarizes the Lord's care of the patriarchs who were wanderers and strangers in the earth. “He permitted no many to oppress them, and he reproved kings for their sake” (v. 14, alluding to Genesis 12…
Psalm 105:36 describes the exodus as the Lord's striking of the “firstborn” of Egypt, “the firstfuits of all their vigor.” Firstborn is firstfruits: It makes obvious sense. And behind the obvious is a link between human and humus , between the fruitfulness of earth and the fruitfulness of the human…
Revelation 12-13 describe draconian and bestial attacks on the saints. The enemies form a triad. Indeed, they form a double triad. First, dragon, sea beast, land beast. Then: Sea beast, land beast, image of the beast. Alternatively, we can see four: Dragon, sea beast, land beast, image of the beast.…
In his contribution to Radical Secularization , John Milbank contests Habermas's Kantian notion of public reason, arguing that reason is not “self-grounded” but “inseparable from our affective and elective intuitions concerning the nature of reality. Reason is always conjoined with feeling and can even be considered to be a reflexive…
Jeffery Leonard ends a Review of Biblical Literature (4/15) review of BC Hodge's Revisiting the Days of Genesis with this observation: “While the author does a workmanlike job of demonstrating how various numbers in Gen 1–11 could be interpreted symbolically, it is not at all clear to me that the…
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