Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Because of sin, the arts sometimes do not serve to glorify but to debase. Sinful men make their environments ugly, and create ugly art to “enhance” their ugly words. But since all men are still God’s images, no men are able to live with such ugliness all the time. Thus,…
Arts and literature reviews in most evangelical Christian publications generally approach their subjects in terms of ideology. We are told whether or not the film or book is acceptable in terms of morals, sexual graphicness, and theological accuracy. While there is definitely a place for such reviews, I fear that…
We speak of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The early Church tended to speak of Him as Father, Word, and Spirit. In this short essay, I want to suggest some other ways to think of the Trinity, ways that I have found pastorally helpful in my own life…
I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and fourth of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and guard My commandments (Ex. 20:5-6). The Second Word forbids acts of ceremonial…
8. The Table of Nations If we assume births every two years, and about 30 years between generations (cp. Gen. 11:12-24), we can come up with an approximate series of dates for the generations recorded in Genesis 10. We shall assume that all three of Noah’s sons had their firstborn…
Zechariah’s first prophecy (Zech. 1:1-6) was delivered in the eighth month of the second year of Darius. The notation of this date serves a number of purposes. Most obviously, it relates Zechariah’s prophecies to those of Haggai. By the time Zechariah delivered his first prophecy, Haggai had already chided the…
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In the introduction to his Meditations on the Sacraments , Karl Rahner describes what he calls the “Copernican revolution” in sacramental theology. To explain the shift in perspective, he asks how Christians have generally experienced the sacraments. According to Rahner, “the average Christian” believes “both externally and internally, human life…
S tewart Alsop begins his book on Washington, DC, The Center , by observing that DC wasn't always the center: “during the long prewar political doldrums, the era of the doughface Presidents, it was no true center of power. Nor was it in the decades between Abraham Lincoln and Theodore…
J B Kennedy's The Musical Structure of Plato's Dialogues is a kind of Bible Code for classical philosophy. In a 2010 article in Apeiron (“Plato, Pythagoreanism, and Stichometry”), Kennedy lays out the basic argument. Kennedy's argument begins from the observation that Greek prose writers, like poets, composed their works in…
S ome gleanings from CJ Labuschagne's Numerical Secrets of the Bible on the Psalms. On Psalm 23: “the three words in the phrase ki a atta immadi, ‘ for you are with me' (23:4), are situated in the mathematical center of the text, with 26 words preceding them and 26…
B ack in the 1990s, seminaries seemed to be thriving. A 1994 cover piece in Christianity Today reported , “In 1992, the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) reported a 9.8 percent enrollment increase over 1991, the largest single increase ever recorded. There was a full-time-equivalent enrollment of 46,400 students in…
H enri de Lubac's Corpus Mysticum is a densely detailed study of the changing punctuation of the medieval theology of the triple body of Christ. “Body of Christ” has a threefold significance: His historical body, in which He lived, died, and rose again; His sacramental body, the bread of the…
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