Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
WHAT IS THE OT PRECURSOR OF THE NT OFFICE OF PASTOR? HOW DOES THE FORMER ILLUMINATE THE LATTER? The first problem to address is: how do we know that there is an office of pastor in the New Testament? 1 Perhaps the way the question is put may permit me…
[This essay was originally published in December, 1981, in The Biblical Educator , a publication of the Institute for Christian Economics, and again with slight revisions in Contra Mundum 7 (Spring, 1993). It is reprinted here as a supplement to my book Creation in Six Days .] In 1979, Dr.…
Anyone seeking to reverse the meaning of this promise needs to come to grips not only with the phrase "God was with the lad" later on, but also with Hagar’s response in 16:13. She worships Yahweh, putting her trust in Him and obeying Him. In fact, Hagar is at the…
Ishmael is the narrator of Melville’s fantasy-romance Moby Dick. Melville takes up the traditional view of Ishmael as a wayward son of Abraham, driven out solely because of the Divine "caprice" of election, an angry man with his hand raised against all other men. He is a fitting "anti-hero," or…
There were five cities at the center of the Canaanite culture in the circle of the Jordan, a place like the Garden of Eden, like the land of Egypt, before it became the Dead Sea at the destruction of the cities (Genesis 13:10). Genesis 14:2 tells us their names: Sodom,…
Meditations by James B. Jordan Genesis 19, the destruction of Sodom and the rescue of Lot, is part two of a story that begins in Genesis 18. These two chapters happen in one 24-hour period: noon and evening in Mamre, and midnight and daybreak in Sodom. God and two angels…
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Donald Gowan’s The Theology of the Prophetic Books is one of the best books on the prophets around. He argues that the message of the prophets, rooted in warnings like Deuteronomy 5:25-31 and 8:19-20, is that Israel will die for her sins. It’s not just that her circumstances are going…
The test: Who wrote the following comments on the birth of Jesus? “He lies in the manger. Notice here that nothing but Christ is to be preached throughout the whole world. What is the manger but the congregations of Christians in the churches to hear the preaching? We are the…
Cristina Nehring’s Atlantic review of Stephen Greenblatt’s Shakespeare biography, Will in the World , is sharply critical of Greenblatt’s New Historicism: “The ‘commitment’ of New Historicists is to ‘particularity’ - or, one might say, to peculiarity. ‘Trans-historical’ dilemmas like ‘to be or not to be,’ to love or not to…
The Son became flesh through the work of the Spirit. Once this pattern is fixed in our minds, we can see foreshadowings of this throughout the OT: God works through His Word, but it is a “voiced” Word, a Word empowered and given authority by God’s “breath.” Creation: Jesus, according…
The Son became flesh through the work of the Spirit. Once this pattern is fixed in our minds, we can see foreshadowings of this throughout the OT: God works through His Word, but it is a “voiced” Word, a Word empowered and given authority by God’s “breath.” Creation: Jesus, according…
1 Corinthians 15:45: And so it is written, the first man Adam became a living being. The Last Adam became life-giving Spirit. We are celebrating Advent, the coming of Jesus in the flesh, but we celebrate it as a people who have never known Jesus according to the flesh. Jesus…
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