Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
[This essay was originally published in 1988. Given the situation that our new national socialists are getting the world into, I thought it might be useful to reprint it here. – JBJordan] The Bible has quite a bit to say about gold, silver, and precious stones, and the Bible always…
I wrote this elsewhere and was encouraged to put it here. It is a comment on what a pastor is. Today, this is not very well understood, and God’s people suffer because of it. There are four professions: medicine, education, law, and religion. Each of these, when done at a…
James Jordan recently pointed out in private conversation how appropriate it is, in John’s Gospel, that Nicodemus is present both to ask Jesus about being born again, and to see Jesus re-enter the womb of the mother. Nicodemus rhetorically asks, “How can a man be born when he is old?…
This is a problematic and much discussed passage. I’ve been discussing it in another forum, and have decided to move it here and present some very preliminary observations about it. One large question is this: Who is the speaker here and what is his situation? Traditionally, the speaker is seen…
1. The current issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction includes a good fantasy novella by John C. Wright, who since his conversion has been writing Christianly. This is a fine fantasy with nods to C. S. Lewis and Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and probably Gene Wolfe as well.…
“It is an experience of our days that the spoken name of Jesus alone exercises an unforeseen power; and the effort which it cost to speak this name is perhaps connected to some faint apprehension of the power which is inherent within it. Wherever the name of Jesus Christ is…
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Zedekiah was the last Davidic king in Judah, and like many of his predecessors he “did evil in the sight of Yahweh.” We might imagine he oppressed the people, promoted idolatry, persecuted prophets, ignored God’s commandments and His prophets. We know from the book of Jeremiah Jehoiakim did all this,…
Louis Dupre suggests that modern thought is riven by a fundamental tension. On the one hand, the real is still conceived, as it classically has been, as an unchanging order, while on the other hand the subject determines meaning and value. Modern thought, to put it otherwise, is caught between…
Proverbs 15:6, translated according to the original Hebrew order, reads: “In the house of the righteous treasure aplenty; but in the revenue of the wicked disturbance.” Two structures overlap and interact here. There is the chiastic order: A. house B. righteous C. treasure C’. revenue B’. wicked A’. disturbance According…
Jesus said that we should be wise as serpents, but how are serpents wise? Genesis 3:1 says that the serpent was more “crafty” (ARUM) than any of the beasts of the field, and the same word is used a number of times in Proverbs, often translated as “prudent.” A crafty…
OK, one trouble, a trouble: There are, we are told, “three views” of the function of Matthew 1:1 - it’s the heading for the genealogy, it’s the heading for the whole book, or it’s the heading for the first section of the book (perhaps extending to 4:16). Why has it…
The logic of Scripture often moves from head to body: What Jesus did, His disciples are to do; we are to have the mind that was in Christ Jesus; we are to follow Him, not He us. Yet, the sequence of Matthew is inverted in several places. Before Jesus is…
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