Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the first installment of this essay, I offered the following chiastic outline of 1 Timothy: A. 1:1-2. Paul greets Timothy as a true child of the Faith, and blesses with grace, mercy, and peace. B. 1:3-7. Timothy is urged to command against heresy. C. 1:8-11. The reason the Law…
In the first installment of this essay, I offered the following chiastic outline of 1 Timothy: A. 1:1-2. Paul greets Timothy as a true child of the Faith, and blesses with grace, mercy, and peace. B. 1:3-7. Timothy is urged to command against heresy. C. 1:8-11. The reason the Law…
In the Bible, a memorial is something that brings God's promises and previous actions to mind, so that He can do them again. The rainbow is the model, set in heaven so that Yahweh remembers the covenant He makes with Noah (Genesis 9:13-15). God is light and dwells in a…
The First Epistle to Timothy fits neatly in the context of what King Jesus and the church are doing in the gospels, in Acts, Revelation, and all of the Apostolic Age in between. Paul writes to Timothy to encourage him in his work as a pastor in the “latter days,”…
I have been pastoring Cornerstone Reformed Church in Carbondale, Illinois since 1999. We are members of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), but have been practicing catholicity for many years, both personally and corporately. I’ve always believed that the Church of Jesus Christ is much more than the local…
Ecumenism is easy to talk about. It’s doing something to promote it that’s the problem. As a pastor in a town with churches of different denominations, all of whom love their doctrinal distinctions and are jealous to defend them whenever they perceive the slightest challenge, how can you be ecumenical…
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John Smart’s Tarantula’s Web , on the circle of intellectuals around John Hayward and TS Eliot is, according to Lachlan Mackinnon , an unrivaled “demonstration” of “just how ‘unpleasant’ it might have been ‘to meet Mr Eliot.” Hayward and Eliot were “extremely” intimate Mackinnon writes, but they fell out over…
Slash me with a glance and purge me with your gaze. Consume me in your flaming eyes, and set my heart ablaze.
A friend and former student, Pastor C.J. Bowen, writes in response to my recent discussion of Jesus as “new Phinehas.” The remainder of this post is from C.J. Having recently preached through the early chapters of Acts, I was bothered by the interpretation that the early church was unfaithful to…
How can Yahweh’s name be profaned? Can holiness leak out? In a recent Princeton dissertation ( This Is the Thing that the Lord Commanded You To Do ) Bryan Bibb notes that some qualities depend on the response of a community; they are socially constructed qualities: “personal qualities (like authority…
As many commentators have pointed out, Leviticus 25-26 form a single literary unit. John Bergsma ( The Jubilee from Leviticus to Quram , 82-3) calls attention to the inclusio on “Mount Sinai” (25:1; 26:46), and lists eight literary links between the two chapters, including a common concern for Sabbath, the…
The Void is one of the essential dimensions of humanness, argues Esther Lightcap Meek ( A Little Manual for Knowing , 35). The Void is the recognition that we might not be, which can arise from curse, betrayal, or from “a brush with death or fear, depression or danger, an…
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