Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The first commandment given in the Levitical sacrificial legislation has to do with the animals appropriate to sacrifice: "When any man of you brings an offering to the Lord, you shall bring your offering of cattle ( behemah ), from the herd or the flock" (Lev. 1:2). Cattle alone were…
This post was originally posted in 2004 The ultimate condemnation of a position in Reformed circles is to show that it “leads back to Rome.” Indeed, one gets the feeling that Rome is a worse destination for a Presbyterian than even hell itself. The accusation of Rome stings deeply, of…
There are countless scholars who have helped me in my reading of various passages of Scripture. I have gleaned insights and keys from them that have unlocked texts that once perplexed me. However, no scholar has done so much to teach me how to read the Scripture more generally than…
The Tortoise and the Hare is perhaps the most well-known of the Greek fables. Its story has been present in every era of human history. From the Indigenous retellings with hummingbirds and cranes to the Biblical account of David and Goliath, the basic furniture of an unlikely hero tale is…
Sexual sins are perhaps the most shame-inducing sins experienced by Christians and non-Christians alike. All sins can bring shame, but sexual sins are deeply personal and affect us in profound ways. For example, adultery leaves its victim devastated by betrayal; porn addiction leaves men feeling gross, pathetic, and lazy; losing…
If the mark of a good book is how many times a person can re-read it with pleasure, Richard Adams’ novel Watership Down is one of the best books of the 20 th century. I’ve taught this book in my middle school literature class for the past three years, and…
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Postmodern tragedy is also rooted in Freud: For Freud, the id desires but is blocked and opposed by the superego. The ego negotiates, and finds ways for the id to express itself without violating the standards of the superego. This is reasonable, submission to the reality principle. But it is…
Christopher Lynch ends a review of several books on just war ( Weekly Standard , Nov 3), with the comment that “popular punditry’s now-routine use of the theory and the flood of recent books on the topic suggest that a change in the nation’s thinking has taken place.” Just in…
Evangelicals these days are positively giddy about worldview. For many, developing a Christian worldview is the answer to all or most of the ills that plague the contemporary church. When I see a bandwagon, however, I tend to wonder why they are heading in that direction, and this contrarian bias…
The internal contradictions of unitarianism: If God is finite, then there is a boundary, and he is hardly worthy of the name God. If he is infinite, then there is no boundary, but there is also no outside. But if there is no “outside,” where does this unitarian God “put”…
To what extent does Platonism arise out of fear of contaminants, of miasma, of impurity? On Derrida’s reading, Plato dreams of an uncontaminated origin and presence that can never be arrived at or achieved, and he sees every supplement as an unhappy contamination of the purity of the origin. That…
Several interesting articles in the current issue of JSOT : 1) Yairah Amit of Tel Aviv University writes on “Progression as a Rhetorical Device in Biblical Literature.” The concept is fairly simple: He’s pointing to places where, in narrative or speech, the biblical writers list a series of events or…
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