Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the Bible, fatness is such a blessing, that it is especially hard to understand why wicked men are permitted to enjoy such a state. It requires a theodicy and faith in God. Thus: “For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek . They are…
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The allusion to the Exodus story is contained in the first words of Deuteronomy 14:1 — “ye are the sons of Yahweh your God” — as well as in 14:2 in the use of the technical term translated “treasured possession,” “His own possession,” “peculiar people,” “precious people,” and so forth.…
I have argued that Deuteronomy 14:1-21 is an independent literary unit that applies the Third Word to the lives of Israelites from the time of Moses and Joshua. In this short pericope, Moses suggests broad and deep meaning by means of literary allusion to the stories of the creation and…
In his recently republished The New Creation , the late, delightful Herbert McCabe defends the priesthood of the plebs as roundly as anyone could want. Citing Hebrews, he claims that "there is an essential difference between the Christian community and the community of the Old Law, or any other religious…
Augustine famously prayed, “Our hearts our restless until they rest in You.” True indeed. Being creatures, we inherently sense our ontological poverty—our innate condition of dependence—and are compelled to find a sense of security. And it is also true—as Augustine’s own narrative painfully illustrates—that one of the things we most…
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Psalm 1 pronounces a blessing on the “ man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked” (v. 1). For some modern translators, it's a sexist text: Aren't women blessed when they refuse the counsel of the wicked? “Man” is not an absolutely necessary translation. The Hebrew ‘ish…
Denominational Christianity is a safety-valve. When things get too hot in a congregation, one or the other party leaves and starts its own church. Pressure reduces. Over time, the divided parties might even make up after a fashion. Denominational Christianity seems a peace treaty. Lesslie Newbigin, a leader in the…
In a recent Theopolis lecture, James Jordan pointed to the ritual of Ruth 4 to explain the significance of removing shoes on holy ground. There, a man hands over a shoe as a sign of submission and ceding authority to another. To remove shoes is to acknowledge that God is…
I went to a screening of Woodlawn last Saturday. Directed by Birmingham brothers Jon and Andrew Erwin, the film tells the true story of revival among the players on the football team at Woodlawn High School in Birmingham during a racially tense period of the 1970s. The film focuses on…
In the first volume of his Reformed Dogmatics (435-6), Herman Bavinck notes that the final end of everything is “God Himself,” since “he can never come to an end in creation but can only rest in himself.” Revelation's purpose is consistent with this overall aim. Thus “the object of revelation…
One of the many illuminating observations in Philipp Blom's Fracture is his observation that the early 20th century witnessed a massive crisis of manhood. He sees signs of it already in pre-World War I Europe (covered in Blom's The Vertigo Years ) as the rise of machinery and factory labor…
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