Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I mentioned last month ( BH 82) in my essay "Like a Dove" that Genesis 8 is a recapitulation of Genesis 1. Let me explicate that assertion here. Of course, the world after the Flood is a new creation, so we may expect a recapitulation of the first creation. It…
The book of Esther is one of the most neglected of the books of the Bible. To be sure, sermons are preached on it, and commentaries have occasionally been written on it, but almost without exception Esther has been interpreted in isolation from the rest of Biblical history, chronology, and…
Dear Mr. ______, . . . Here is how I look at the geocentricity question. Since I don’t recall what I wrote you before, I may be repeating some things. 1. The Bible does not teach it. Biblical passages used to support the idea are being misinterpreted. My original paper…
Answer 4 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is often taken as a magnificent answer to the question, "What is God?" It reads: "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." Presbyterians are fond of praising this statement, preaching on it,…
The gospels tell us that at Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him "in bodily form like a dove" (Luke 3:22 & parallels). Biblically sensitive commentators have associated this event with three Old Testament parallels: (1) the hovering of the Spirit over the creation in Genesis 1:2; (2) the…
This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. (John 8:6) The story of the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:11) has been part of the canonical Christian Bible from its earliest…
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1 Timothy 4:13: Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed upon you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery. Prior to the Reformation, the Western church treated ordination as a sacrament. Protestants have never done that. For the seven sacraments of…
Many of you received an email this week encouraging you to be at church on time and rebuking those who are habitually tardy. Some got the impression that the elders don’t want you to show up at all if you’re running late. That’s not the point. If you’re unavoidably tardy…
In response to my earlier post on “Spouse and Kingdom,” Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio writes, “it strikes me that the WCF’s dualism in describing the Church reflects the typical Western dualism that was congealing during the 17th century. Invisible and spiritual matters can be described in poetic, imaginative,…
Zizioulas locates the central difference between patristic and postmodern views of “otherness” in the way each conceives the relation of old and new. For postmodernism, “alterity involves negation, rupture, ‘leaving behind’, for patristic thought the ‘new’ relates to the ‘old’ in a positive way.” He demonstrates this by appealing to…
In his 2006 volume, Communion and Otherness , John Zizioulas pretty directly connects Western philosophy with the fall of Adam. Adam claimed to be God and thus “rejected the Other as constitutive of his being.” As a result, Self took “ontological priority over the Other,” with the result that “otherness…
The extension of rights to the Jews was one of the great achievements of the French Revolution, and Rosenstock-Huessy moves from a discussion of the resulting Jewish enthusiasm for liberalism to a digression dealing with the relation of Jews and Gentiles in history. It is titled “Alpha and Omega,” and…
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