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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A student suggests that Isaiah 61 is chiastically organized, and centers on verses 5-6, which promise that strangers will pasture the flocks of Israel and that Israel will consume the treasures of the nations. Overall, the passage announces the good news of return, the great Jubilee of Israel’s restoration to…
Accommodation is often trotted out as a way to account for the unscientific language of Scripture. We now know that the earth does not rise and set, but the ancient Hebrews did not know that, and so God accommodated Himself to their (low) level of scientific knowledge when He guided…
Perhaps it’s the JPS Tanakh translation, but it struck me that the Samson narratives manifest the broad comedy of a Babylonian myth or the legends compiled by Levi-Strauss. He goes about tearing lions like lambs, posing riddles, lighting foxes on fire, and so on and on. Only moralistic Christians could…
Leviticus 10 is often cited in support of the Reformed “Regulative Principle of Worship.” It does support that principle, but not if the principle is formulated, as it often is, as “whatever is not commanded is forbidden.” The sin of Nadab and Abihu was offering “strange” or “unauthorized” fire on…
Frank Gorman says that ritual in Bible is means of maintaining order of world against chaos: “ritual must function as a means of ‘manipulating’ the orders of creation. It is the means by which the categories of ‘order’ and ‘chaos’ can be negotiated. Ritual thus must be seen as the…
In his stimulating Clark Lectures (recently published as Grace and Necessity ), Rowan Williams suggests, following David Jones, that there are certain ontological conditions for the possibility of poetry: “the ontology, if we can use that forbidding word here, of a universe that is inextricably both material and significative, where…
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