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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In his book on Dogma and Preaching , Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger reflected on the value of Christian festivity: “A Christian feast . . . means that the human person leaves the world of calculation and determinisms in which everyday life snares him, and that he focuses his being on the…
“I along am not able to carry all this people,” Moses says when Israel complains about hunger in the wilderness. “If You are going to deal thus with me, please kill me at once” (Numbers 11:14-15). Yahweh responds by ordered Moses to gather 70 men from the people, on whom…
Jeff Menne argues that the films of Francis Ford Coppola are films about the business of film, and specifically about Francis Ford Coppola’s place in that business. The film industry that Coppola first entered, Menne argues, is a classic example of “Fordism,” of the mechanization and routinization of work. For…
A study from the Columbia Business School has discovered that “umpires grant a larger and more generous strike zone to All-Star pitchers, and were also less likely to miss pitches that were in the official strike zone for these pitchers.” The research reviewed 800,000 pitches from 2008-2009, comparing them to…
Jacob’s firstborn is Reuben, but he doesn’t become the preeminent son of Jacob because he takes his father’s concubine. Neither do the next two, Simeon and Levi, because they slaughter the men of the city of Shechem. It’s the fourth, Judah, who becomes the chief among his brothers. The same…
In his recent Trinity House lectures on Genesis, James Jordan argues that the sons of God (that is, the faithful line of Seth) are attracted to the “good” daughters of men (women from Cain’s line) not because of their beauty but because of the social and cultural advantages of allying…
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