Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A while back a friend told me that his church had finally introduced weekly communion. He told me that they were having an 8:00 a.m. service on Sundays for anyone who wanted to have communion. At present only about five people were coming to this service, but he was hopeful…
According to James B. Jordan’s outline of Deuteronomy, the first commandment section runs from 6:1 to 11:32, and the second commandment section begins with 12:1. 1 That this division of the text is sound is confirmed by a comparison of 6:1 with 12:1. Deuteronomy 6:1 announces that "this is the…
Calling Jerusalem the "holy city" comes so naturally to Christians that it comes as something of a surprise to realize how infrequently the phrase is used in Scripture. Not only is Jerusalem rarely called holy, but in the Old Testament this classification is found only in texts that refer to…
Nicodemus’s conversation with Jesus in John 3:1-15 is often regarded as an illustration of the tremendous stupidity of the Jews of our Lord’s day. Those who take the passage this way fail to recognize the profound nature of Nicodemus’s questions and of Jesus’ answers. In verse 3, Jesus tells Nicodemus…
In his book 1994? , Harold Camping asserts that the life spans of the primeval patriarchs of Genesis 5 & 11 were actually epochs, one after another. This together with other mistakes in interpretation yields for him a creation date of 11013 B.C. From here, Camping tries to work out…
I have received a number of letters asking for my comments on this difficult passage. Here is my best shot! 2. Now I praise you because you remember me in everything, and hold firmly to the traditions, just as I delivered them to you. This statement opens a new section…
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C. S. Lewis has some wise words about sex in the Eros chapter of The Four Loves : “our advertisements, at their sexiest, paint the whole business in terms of the rapt, the intense, the swoony-devout; seldom a hint of gaiety. And the psychologists have so bedevilled us with the…
Eve Sweetser of UC Berkeley has a review of a book by Susan Goldin-Meadow in the June 10 issue of Nature . The book is entitled Hearing Gesture and it seeks to answer several questions about the cognitive role of gesture: “is gesture really a window on thought? If it…
Baruch Halpern argues in his 2001 biography of David, David’s Secret Demons , that David was the first individualist, the first modern man. Part of his evidence is that David so often violates conventions in surprising ways. He offers David’s battle with Goliath as an example. Contrary to the popular…
The Gifts of God, Hebrews 9:1-10 INTRODUCTION It is often said that we come to worship to give and not to receive. That is a dangerous half-truth. Praise, thanks, adoration are all part of worship, of course, and God delights in our praise. But in worship as in all of…
Iain Provan suggests the following interpretation of Ecclesiastes 8:12-13: “The clear implication of his thinking must be that there is some ‘time’ beyond the ‘times’ of life in which wrongs can be righted and imbalanced corrected; yet as we have seen Qohelet is agnostic about life after death (3:18-21) .…
Evensong A full moon rises from behind The topmost branches of a tree, Then slants across the sky. A pheasant?s shriek joins distant shouts, The barks and laughter from the park, On the cooling air. Then comes the silence of the night: Not the silence of the dead, But too…
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