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…
Showing page 244 of 309
Showing page 5 of 43
Writing in the 1610s, William Barclay pointed to the astonishing paradoxical benefits of smoking: “Tobacco is hote, because it hath acrimonie; yet, it is cold because it is narcoticke and stupefactiue, it maketh drunken, and refresheth, it maketh hungrie and filleth, it maketh thirstie and quencheth thirst. Finalie, to bring…
Michael D. Hurley has a fine review of Nicholas Boyle’s Sacred and Secular Scriptures: A Catholic Approach to Literature in the Feb 11 issue of TLS . While Boyle contests the efforts of Herder and Schleiermacher to reduce “Word to word,” he still emphasizes the continuity between the Bible and…
Jesus came to fulfill the law. Jesus consistently flouted the ceremonial laws of cleanliness. How can we put these two statements together? Perhaps the “uncleanness” laws are misnamed. The intention of the laws is not to invent new ways to be estranged and exiled from God. The heart of the…
A student perceptively suggests that first-century Jews had become so attached to waiting for the Messiah that they could not bring themselves to acknowledge the fulfillment of their hopes. Against all that the prophets had taught, they had become tragic, and unfulfilled longings had become (and still remain) the essence…
God has enemies. You need only pick up the Psalter to discover this. ?The enemies of Yahweh will be like the glory of the pastures, they vanish ?Elike smoke they vanish away?E(Psalm 37). ?Because of the greatness of Your power Your enemies will give feigned obedience to You?E(Ps 66). ?Let…
Part 1: Dionysus against the Crucified. Section 1: City and the Wastes. Hart raises the question, What is postmodernism? And he answers by citing Milbank?s claim that postmodern French philosophers, for all their differences, are united in an ?ontology of violence.?EBeginning from a radical historicism and perspectivism, postmodernists move to…
Showing page 2000 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
