Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
10. Do not slander [tattle on] a slave to his master, Lest he curse [denounce] you and you be found guilty. The Sojourner of Proverbs 30 is a humble man. He makes this clear in verses 2-4, where he says that he is stupider than anyone else on earth, but…
In retrospect and at first glance, many of the issues that have plagued and divided the Church seem incredibly trivial. The Quartodecimians were branded as heretics for celebrating Easter on 14 Nisan. One of the issues that divided the Eastern and Western Churches in 1054 was the kind of bread…
The gifts of the wise men have been commonly interpreted as royal gifts to the infant King of the Jews. Each of the three gifts is, indeed, connected with kings and kingship in Scripture. The Lord’s anointed is pictured wearing a crown of gold in Psalm 21:3, and the gold…
The Church is not in good shape. Nearly every week we hear about another prominent Christian leader who has fallen into scandalous sin. Many shepherds feed their flocks a diet of baby food, if not outright poison. Few Churches celebrate the Lord’s Supper regularly, and few Christians appreciate its importance.…
Two things I asked of Thee, Do not refuse me before I die: Keep deception and words of falsehood far from me, Give me neither poverty nor riches, Feed me with the food that it my portion, Lest I be full and deny Thee, And say, "Who is the LORD?"…
During the Middle Ages, Joseph, the husband of Mary, was the butt of many jokes. Medieval theater and art often depicted him as something of a buffoon, decidedly marginal to the gospel story. In part, this was the unfortunate obverse of the exaltation of Mary; any man would suffer by…
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In his fascinating Faith of Our Fathers , Chan Kei Thong points to many biblical images embedded in Chinese characters. His argument could be made even stronger by looking at Hebrew terminology. For instance, he says of the character “zui,” which means sin, that “The top part is . .…
At the beginning of the Great Sacrifice performed by the Chinese emperor for centuries, singers sang the song of creation, addressed to the “Sovereign Lord” known as “Shang Di”: “Of old in the beginning, there was the great chaos, without form and dark. The five planets had not begun to…
One of the differences between those associated with “Federal Vision” theology and those opposed to it is a difference of theological imagination. The opponents operate with a theological imagination that distinguishes and clarifies; ontology is distinguished from relationality, nature from supernature, ecclesiology from soteriology. On the other side are theologians…
According to Adolf Loos, a turn of the 20th-century Viennese architect and critic, modern style combines beauty and practicality. Both are necessary: “By beautiful, what we mean is that something has achieved fullness, completion. But no useless, impractical object can really be described as ‘full’ or ‘complete.’” One can imagine…
Some initial observations on Nobuyoshi Kiuchi’s recent commentary on Leviticus in the Apollos series from IVP. 1) Kiuchi intriguingly translates hata and hatta’t , traditionally rendered in terms of “sin” or “purification” in terms of “hiding”: ” hata and hatta’t mean ‘to hide oneself’ and the condition of ‘hiding oneself,’…
A student points out that Hebrews 1-2:4 contains seven quotations from the Old Testament. Through these seven words, God speaks His Son as the new creation.
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