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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Andrzej Toczyski's The "Geometrics" of the Rahab Story offers an insightful, multi-layered close reading of Joshua 2. His syntactical analysis of the chapter examines the features of the text that steer the reader's involvement in the story. His aim is to show how Joshua has been and is a "vehicle…
David Goldman is a conservative and a patriot, and is not given to hyperbole. But he describes the current US attitude toward Chinas a "xenophobic" and "ugly," and accuses fellow conservative Victor Davis Hanson of "crazy talk" about China. In response to Trump's tariffs on Chinese goods, "Chinese officials are…
Haley Goranson Jacob's Conformed to the Image of His Son is an exploration of Paul's theology of glory. Jacob's focus is on the meaning of the phrase in her title, drawn from Romans 8. She finds the several common interpretations of the phrase wanting: Conformity to the Son isn't physical…
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed, Charles Taylor argues, the development of the "nova." At that time, "the alternatives open to unbelief are multiplied and enriched." After World War II, these options are diffused to the whole of Western societies, and this produces a "super-nova" ( A Secular…
In his contribution to The Future of Hope , John Milbank offers a description of postmodernity and suggests ways for the church to respond. Postmodernism may be a thing of the past; we're supposed to be in post-postmodernity nowadays. Still, much of what Milbank describes is still with us, and…
The Third Word assumes that we carry the Lord’s name. What it prohibits is bearing, carrying, or lifting that name “in vain” or “emptily.” The word can mean “false,” and bearing the name “falsely” is one of the sins that the Lord prohibits here. That does involve speech. This phrasing…
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