Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
"Vanity of vanities", says the Preacher. "All is vanity". Life, we are told in the book of Ecclesiastes, is a repetitious, wearisome cycle; all that is and all that will be has already been. There is nothing new under the sun. What is crooked cannot be made straight, what is…
The Bible tells us that when God created the earth, He set up three zones of life. The first was the world itself. The second was the holy land of Eden. And the third was the Garden in Eden, God’s sanctuary. God told Adam and Eve that every tree was…
In our survey of Biblical chronology we have arrived at the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, which provide chronological information for the period after the return from exile, the Restoration Period of Old Testament history. The question we begin to address in this essay is whether the Artaxerxes of these…
These verses from the Sermon on the Mount are generally taken in connection with Jesus’ earlier statement concerning adultery in the heart (vv. 27-28); the eye and the hand have obvious relevance to the sin of adultery. At the same time, most commentators admit that the principle of avoiding occasions…
17. The eye that mocks a father, And despises to obey a mother, The ravens of the valley will pick it out, And the young eagles will eat it. 18. There are three things that are too wonderful for me, Four that I do not understand: 19. The way of…
The modern Church in America and virtually everywhere else is ideology-centered, not geographical. This is because various Churches believe different things and have different customs of worship and sacraments. The ideological Church has gradually developed from the time of the Reformation, because accuracy of doctrine has become more important to…
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The “I” of Isaiah 50 - the Servant of Yahweh, or the prophet himself - expects to be justified (v. 8; verb is matzdiqi from tzadaq ). How will he be justified? He will be justified because Yahweh has given him a tongue to “hasten” the weary, to urge them…
It’s hard to discuss the social consequences of gay marriage because we don’t have much data to draw from. One way to pose the question in a more “testable” way is to generalize: What are the social consequences of defining sex as a bodily act between two individuals without any…
In the March 2013 print issue of First Things , Rabbi Gilles Bernheim, Chief Rabbi of France, examines what’s not being said when gay marriage advocates advocate for gay marriage. The notion, for instance, that “homosexuals are victims of discrimination” because they don’t have the right to marry whom they…
Another reflection on the debate between Douglas Wilson and Andrew Sullivan: The argument that homosexuality is “unnatural” is not going to get much steam going either. Sullivan waxed on and on about multi-sexed plants and sex-changing fish. Once one accepts Darwinian evolution, this sort of sexual variety becomes relevant to…
I came away from a debate on gay marriage between Douglas Wilson and Andrew Sullivan deeply impressed with the difficulties that Christians have, and will continue to have, defending a biblical view of marriage to the American public. It will take nothing short of a cultural revolution for biblical arguments…
Braudy ( The World in a Frame: What We See in Films, 25th Anniversary Edition ) uses the character of Rotwang from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to make the point that the best films are about the potentials of film. Rotwang is a mediating figure in Lang’s film, living above ground…
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