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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Athanasius summed up a patristic truism when he said, "God became man so man might become God." All the Church Fathers believed this. So, in different ways, did medieval Christians and Zwingli and Bucer and Calvin and Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley. As Carl Moser has argued, deification is a…
A promise is given to Rebekah and Isaac, “the older will serve the younger,” and a child is born. Isaac, the son of laughter, brings both a beast and a deceiver into the world. He was not only a cause for laughter at his conception; he also delivered a punchline…
When I read Christian Nationalists, Catholic post-liberals, communitarians, and others, I feel like the elderly woman in the old Wendy's commercial. She bit into a burger, got a mouthful of bun, and shouted, "Where's the beef?" I nibble on essays, and books, and tweets, get a mouthful of ethnicity, and…
When I was a boy, my mother hung a framed copy of Rudyard Kipling's "If" at the foot of my bed. I'm sure it was the first poem I memorized. Kipling's opening lines come to mind a lot lately: If you can keep your head when all about you Are…
Does Bible study matter - I mean, in the real world? Who cares what anyone thinks of Adam or Abraham, whether you're pre-, a-, or post-mil, when missiles are flying from Israel to Iran and back? Yes, Bible study matters, especially in the midst of today's war in the Middle…
We’ve said it before at Theopolis: young men are in trouble. Our boys are increasingly addicted to tech and pornography, trading tangible, earthly pleasures for gnostic, disembodied simulations. And even those who aren’t enslaved to explicit pornography often live in a near-constant stream of cheap stimulation: swipes, clips, memes and…
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