Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
After Elijah’s battered and depressed howling in the wilderness it must have seemed like the new prophet came eating and drinking. Which is a pattern we see again in the New Testament—John is explicitly identified with Elijah (Luke 1.17, Matthew 11.14), howling the truth in the wilderness that the people…
Reading Robert Conquest’s biography of Stalin 1 has opened new lines of meditation on Paul’s command in Colossians 3:9. But before turning to that, let me briefly indicate what Paul is not saying. He is not saying that there is no such thing as righteous deception, such as Jael practiced…
You won’t find wild lions today in Israel. But lions used to range much more widely than they do now, and in biblical times they were a menace that shepherds in Israel had to contend with. David did as a shepherd boy, and Amos—who “ was among the sheepbreeders of…
I would like to remedy a flaw for English speakers in the book of Genesis. A flaw that may seem innocuous, but we must remember where the devil lives...in the details. If we are to fear the Lord, it behooves our translation committees to ensure that the fearfulness of God…
While reading at my son’s baseball game this week, a mom from our school approached me and asked if I was reading Dante. I wasn’t, but our sons are both reading Divine Comedy in their sophomore literature class, so it was a reasonable question. What unfolded was a quick conversation…
In the first two essays in this series, I addressed the question of how the nations would learn about Israel’s Torah, in the second essay especially emphasizing the aesthetic aspects of Israel’s testimony. For we naturally wonder: How would people in Mesopotamia or Egypt, not to mention the rest of…
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INTRODUCTION John frequently exhorts his readers to love one another (2:10; 3:10, 11, 23), and speaks of God’s love for us (3:1). Here, he connects these two loves inseparably. The noun or verb “love” is used 27 times (3 x 3 x 3) in this chapter, and twice he addresses…
Nothing seems as anti-gnostic as the contemporary obsession with bodily perfection. We can remold our bodies in any way we want - tuck in here, enhance there, replant hair and remold biceps, remove wrinkles and signs of aging. In fact, this obsession is completely gnostic. It attempts to side-step the…
1 John 4:2: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. Why do we have this meal? The simple answer is that Jesus commanded it. But why did He command it? After all, aren’t we in the New Covenant, which is a Spiritual…
Yesterday, January 6, was Epiphany, the beginning of one of the traditional seasons of the church year. The word “epiphany” means “manifestation” or “revelation.” Advent celebrates the coming of the Lord; Epiphany, His revelation. We need both. If God comes to us, but remains veiled and incognito, we will never…
In a 1980 essay, Richard Rorty offers a quick overview of the development of European thought from idealism through romanticism and pragmatism to what he calls textualism. The two ends of this development, idealism and textualism, are similar in various ways: both are antagonistic toward science, both claim that we…
Lubac is by all accounts one of the great Catholic theologians of the past century, and one of the most influential. He never worked on a dissertation, and because of the disruptions of war never went through a great deal of the formal training expected of Jesuits. He was eventually…
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