Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, "The Lord rebuke you" (Jude 9). Jude 9 raises several difficulties (though not insuperable difficulties) for conservative commentators. The event that Jude…
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…
One of the most pressing problems facing Christians today is how the faith relates to the crises of our civilization. On all sides, Christian spokesmen are trying to offer solutions and perspectives on social issues, in order to try and reform our degenerating society. Abortion, pornography, homosexuality, immigration, war, criminal…
In the last several months, a number of people have written or phoned to ask me why I and the other men of Geneva Ministries are remaining in a tiny Presbyterian denomination, rather than joining a large, historic, liturgical body. The question arises, it seems, because in my writings and…
One of the unrecognized and most deadly evils of modern life’s facets is Chinese food. Most people are wholly unaware of the critical nature of the Chinese food question, and blithely continue to participate in this wicked and dangerous activity: eating Chinese food. Of course, to speak against such a…
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Matthias Grebe’s Election, Atonement, and the Holy Spirit is an impressive piece of work. Grebe is as much at home in Barth and Barthian scholarship as in Leviticus and Old Testament scholarship, and the driving question of his book has to do with dogmatic logic that connects election and atonement…
John eats a book from an angel and is told to prophesy (Revelation 10:10-11). But the angel doesn’t commission him as prophet. Rather, “ they said, ‘You must prophesy’” (v. 11). Who are they? The nearest plural speakers are the thunders (10:3-4). It seems that the seven thunders commission John…
After reviewing Greek texts that describe the “strife of the elements,” Eduard Schweitzer summarizes the grim world of the ancients: He stresses “how widespread the conviction was that the four elements, though originally in a harmony of equilibrium, were continually threatening the existence of the world by their ‘mighty strife’…
Fernando Belo’s summary of the symbolic system of purity ( A Materialist Reading of the Gospel of Mark , 38-9) is a bit too schematic, but still illuminating. He sees two overlapping systems in the Pentateuch: one of pollution/contagion and one of debt. I focus on the first. Israel’s “symbolic…
Struggling to articulate the cosmic deliverance of Romans 8, Stanislas Breton ( A Radical Philosophy of Saint Paul , 116-7) writes that “heaven and earth . . . are traversed by a visceral yearning orienting them toward and subordinating them to another kingdom, one that is more than human precisely…
The incomparable Martin Hengel begins The Atonement with a question: Did Greco-Roman culture have categories to understand Jesus’ death as an expiatory sacrifice? He answers with a dense Hengelian catalog of mythic and historical instances of the apotheosis of heroes, death for the fatherland, death for the truth, expelled pharmakoi…
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