Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
From time to time, when I’ve lectured on how to read the Bible, I’ve used art-music as one example thereof. When we listen to a simple folk song, we hear the same melody over and over again, but this is not how composers write "high" music. Let me amplify. A…
Sermons are rarely more tiresome than when they strive for relevance. Drawing from the latest headlines transforms the preacher into a one-man MacLaughlin Group, a Crossfire without the cross though perhaps with some of the fire, and leave the congregation thinking, "If I wanted Meet the Press, I could have…
Part One: The Old Testament “Drink is in itself a good creature of God, and to be received with thankfulness, but the abuse of drink is from Satan, the wine is from God, but the drunkard is from the Devil” Increase Mather in Wo to Drunkards (1673). 1. The “wine”…
28. These are the people whom Nebuchadnezzar carried away into exile: in the 7th year 3023 Jews. 29. In the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar 832 persons from Jerusalem. 30. In the 23rd year of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile 745 Jewish people; there were 4600…
Revelation 21:24 says, concerning the light shining from the New Jerusalem, "and the nations will walk by her light, and the kings of the land will bring their glory into her." Similarly, Revelation 22:2 says, concerning the Tree of Life, that "the leaves of the tree were for the healing…
Jeremiah and the Beginning of Jehoiakim’s Reign Now comes Jeremiah, at the beginning of Jehoiakim’s reign, with similar words (Jeremiah 26). Harken to God’s law, he said, or else God will destroy the Temple the same way He sent the Philistines to tear down the Tabernacle at Shiloh (Jeremiah 26:6;…
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Anselm is sometimes accused of deleting the devil from the story of atonement. His satisfaction theory is said to displace and replace the Christus Victor theology of the church fathers, and in so doing to replace and displace Jesus' conquest of the devil from the center of the atonement. In…
Evangelicals commonly say things like, God would have been perfectly just if He had sent the whole of sinful humanity to hell. Anselm would beg to differ. God created "rational beings" so that "through rejoicing in him, it might be blessedly happy" ( Cur Deus Homo , 315). Man was…
Boso, Anselm's interlocutor in Cur Deus Homo , cites a collection of New Testament texts, and concludes: "Christ endured death under the compulsion of obedience, rather than through the intention of his own free will" (276). Anselm denies that there is any compulsion involved. While he acknowledges that the Father…
Three waves of Gentiles flood Judah in the book of Isaiah. The first threat is from Aram and Israel, from Syria and the Northern kingdom. Assyria is the rising power to the east, and that power is threatening to overrun the nations to the west of Assyria. The kings of…
Should we expect our political leaders to be saints? There's a case for saying No. We might begin by making a distinction between private morality and the use of public authority. The ethical question that's relevant to a political leader is the latter: Is he going to abuse power? What…
In what Rosenstock-Huessy calls "the dead universe" of nature, "time gallops 'like water, flung from cliff to cliff' and is never present" ( In the Cross of Reality , 250). This means that "we get to know time only when we leave external space behind us. When a wall stands…
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