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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Walton and Sandy ( The Lost World of Scripture ) define science as “an understanding of the material world derived from an empirical process and operating according to naturalistic premises” (50). Given that definition, it’s hardly surprising that they conclude that “the Bible’s illocutions do not offer scientific description or…
In their editorial introduction to Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions , Christian Frevel and Christophe Nihan question the common distinction between “moral” and “ritual” impurity, and the popular claim that purity rules were evolved in a “spiritualized” direction. They admit that purity means different things in different contexts,…
John sees a strong angel descending from heaven (Revelation 10:1). It’s not just an angelophany; it’s a theophany, a Christophany. That’s evident from the fact that, like the throne of God itself, his head is surrounded by the rainbow (cf. 4:3). His head is in the place where the Enthroned…
Samantha Melamed reports that young men today are no longer satisfied with a handshake: “more men are embracing, well, embracing.” Melamed writes, “The rise in hugging can be directly traced to declines in homophobia, according to Mark McCormack, a University of Durham (England) sociologist who has studied the behavior of…
“Grain and new wine” is an automatic combination throughout the Hebrew Bible (cf. e.g., Genesis 27:28, 37; Numbers 12:27; Deuteronomy 7:13; 2 Kings 18:32; 2 Chronicles 31:5; 32:28; Isaiah 62:8; Hosea 2:8). Grain ( dagan ) is almost never used without “wine,” and when it happens you know something is…
Hee Youl Lee’s A Dynamic Reading of the Holy Spirit in Revelation is a complicated monograph on the role of the Spirit in Revelation. Lee argues that the book is organized by a sixfold plot (introduction, setting, complication, resolution, evaluation, moral)_ that functions at four levels (heaven, earth, abyss, lake…
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