Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A couple of decades ago, when I was a young Reconstructionist (instead of a middle-aged post-Reconstructionist), I coined the phrase "political polytheism" to describe how modern evangelical Christians approach matters of social law and politics. Christians want the Bible for Church and family life, but turn to other gods for…
Gary North has from time to time taken note of some of the differences between contracts and covenants. For him, one of the most important is the oath-character of a covenant. Naturally, the English terms "contract" and "covenant" can be used with varying nuances by different writers, and their zone…
The Book of Chronicles is the last book in the Hebrew Canon of the Old Testament. The word "canon" means "authoritative list" when used in connection with the Bible. What we call the Hebrew Canon consists of 24 books arranged in three major divisions: the Law, the Prophets, and the…
by: Peter Leithart and James Jordan The Book of Kings is structured chiastically, or concentrically. To see this clearly, we start in the middle and work our way outward. 2 Kings 3–7 record the central events of the ministry of Elisha. Elisha makes his first appearance in 1 Kings 19:19-21,…
(The following is a supplement to my book, God’s War Against Humanism , a study of the book of Judges, available from Biblical Horizons for $20.00 – a photocopy of the original book, which is now out of print). The turning point in the book of Judges is 8:22-28. Here…
From time to time I am asked how I think the Lord’s Supper should be done. This essay is my response to that question. To start with, we should agree that the Lord’s Supper is the only ritual we are obligated to do in the New Covenant on a routine…
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Jacob Olupona ( African Religions , 118-9) tells the remarkable story of Rev. Sunday Adelaja and the Word of Faith Bible Church of Kiev: “Adelaja, a Nigerian, initially and somewhat to his dismay found himself in Belarus (then part of the Soviet Union) on a scholarship to study journalism. While…
Karin Neutel's A Cosmopolitan Ideal is a detailed contextual study of Paul's declaration that in Christ there is no more Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. “Contextual” here means that Neutel examines the use of these and similar contrasts in Greco-Roman and Jewish texts of the first…
F. S. Naiden is making a career in classics by unsettling settled academic opinion about ancient religion and ritual. He did it in the 2012 Smoke Signals for the Gods , which reintroduced the gods into modern accounts of Greek sacrifice. Earlier (I'm reading Naiden in reverse order!), in Ancient…
Modernism was born in Vienna at the turning point from the 19th to the 20th century. On most accounts, the climate of fin de siecle Vienna was dark and brooding breeding ground for modernist nightmares. Without denying that dimension of Viennese modernism, Kevin Karnes argues in A Kingdom Not of…
In his monograph on The Throne Motif in the Book of Revelation (228-9), Lazlo Gallusz lays out a helpful macro-outline of Revelation, which shows the alternation of temple scenes and visions: Temple scene 1, 1:9-20 (Jesus among lampstands) Vision 1, 2:1-3:22 Temple scene 2, 4:1-5:14 (heavenly temple) Vision 2, 6:1-8:1…
In his very short introduction to African Religions , Jacob Olupona summarizes the creation-and-fall myth of the Basari of Northern Togo and Ghana: “A creator god named Unumbotte who makes man, a snake, and an antelope; he then places them on unrefined earth with one tree. Unumbotte gives them seeds…
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