Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Christmas is a joyful season, but for many it turns into something else. Instead of joy, it is full of disappointment and unhappiness. Instead of an occasion for family fellowship, it becomes an opportunity for opening old wounds, reigniting old arguments, giving new life to rancor that should have died…
The Temple of Time The “covenant-literary matrix” of the Bible is not a pattern imposed upon the text, but the internal logic of its arrangement. This fundamental structure, functioning at multiple levels simultaneously, is a ceaseless reiteration of God’s primary theme. It is an algorithm forged in the furnace of…
In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Exodus, Solomon began to build the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. [1] That the author of Kings should date the start of the building of the temple from the Exodus is noteworthy. In Exodus 15:17, in Moses’ song following the…
Philip Schaff, a German Reformed theologian, states in The Principle of Protestantism that the material principle of Protestantism is “the doctrine of the justification of the sinner before God by the merit of Christ alone through faith.” This is the core message of the Church which leads “to the abandonment…
“Religion” is an attempt to create or build a tower with a top, or to build a temple that is self-contained. The story of The Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 is the story of mankind’s attempt to create a world that is self-contained and does not need God. All…
In the first essay in this series, I presented a case for dating Matthew before AD 70, contrary to the present scholarly consensus. In this essay, I intend to present cultural, personal, ecclesiological, and theological arguments for a very early date for Matthew. [1] The cultural argument concerns literacy in…
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W hen Jesus condemns hypocrisy, argues Oliver O'Donovan ( Desire of Nations , 109–10), He is speaking of conformity to “public expectation.” O'Donovan suggests that the sense is captured by the word “performance.” Jesus is not speaking of motives in the modern sense of the word: “A motive, as we…
W hy didn't the apostles move more quickly to protest and attempt to abolish slavery? There are various answers to that, but Oliver O'Donovan's gets to the heart of the issue: The church “believed that Christ had abolished it” ( Desire of Nations , 185). Of course, the church had…
P hilip Rieff notes, “That word [ Kulturkampf ] first appeared in common German use in the early 1870s during the struggle of the National Liberal political party to disarm by law the moral/educational authority, and political punditry, of a triumphalist Roman Catholic hierarchy, revitalized as it then was by…
K. Luria examines the Sacred Boundaries (xxvii–xxxxi) of early modern France, in an effort to correct extremes of historiography. Some have argued that sacred boundaries between religious groups led to violence; other historians have pointed to continuous interaction between Catholics and Protestants. Both are right. Symbolic boundaries separated Catholic and…
A 1989 article by Wolfgang Reinhard on the relationships among the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and early modern state-building is an excellent brief summary of the relationship between Reformation and post-Reformation “confessionalization” and the formation of modern states and national identities. The Reformers' turn to the state was in the first instance…
O verall, the Chronicler's account of Solomon's temple construction (2 Chronicles 3:1-5:1) is arranged chiastically: A. Solomon begins to build, 3:1-2 B. What Solomon made, 3:3-4:10 C. What Huram-abi made, 4:11-17 B’. What Solomon made, 4:18-22 A’. Solomon completes ( shalam ) work, 5:1 The long section in B is…
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