Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Christians get sex wrong when we start from the wrong end. We start from human desires, passions, biological drives and “needs.” These are treated as givens, as the base-line natural reality of human sexuality. Then we come to the Bible and find, to our surprise, that God places all kinds…
Why isn't Proverbs better known as the Bible's book on "manliness"? I use quotation marks because the term almost seems archaic in our present culture, along with "manhood." Perhaps the Church is too embarrassed to admit the Bible addresses that much attention to the topic. But another reason can be…
In certain evangelical Christian churches it is the tradition to exalt preaching above the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Ever since the rise of Revivalist preachers pushing for conversions, the practice has cast doubt upon the possibility of Baptism or the Lord’s Supper being a “means of grace”…
Perhaps one of the most stimulating sections of Yoram Hazony’s The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture addresses the question of how we are to discern the meaning of biblical narratives, especially how biblical narratives might present arguments of a more general nature. Hazony quotes John Barton’s remarks about the difficulty of…
In this slender volume, Joseph Minich (Ph.D. student at the University of Dallas) attempts to answer some of the deepest questions of human existence. With his honesty, his probing questioning, his wide reading, and his ability to plunge beneath superficial answers, he provides a helpful source of reflection for fellow…
A Closer Look at Noah’s Post-Flood Humiliation In Genesis 9:20-27 My wife is currently leading a Bible study through Genesis for a group of insatiable Bible students. Because she is a deep thinker and has a high view of inspiration, there is no passage she is unwilling to face head…
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Barth quotes one CJ Nitzsch on the significance of the doctrine of the Trinity: ?So long as theism only distinguishes God and the world and never God from God, it is always caught in a relapse or transition to the pantheistic or some other denial of absolute being. There can…
Walsh has this intriguing comment about the man stone to death for blasphemy in Lev 24: “The man is oddly anonymous, although his Israelite mother, his maternal grandfather, and his tribal forefather are all named. This is a more subtle invocation of the law of the talion: the man who…
Jerome Walsh (in Style and Structure in Biblical Hebrew Narrative ) points out the chiastic structure of Gen 12:6b: Pharaoh gives Abram “flocks-and-herds/jackasses/men servants//women servants/jenny asses/camels.” This arrangement highlights the gift of slaves to Abram, anticipating the “gift” of Hebrew slaves to Moses in the exodus. Abram leaves Egypt not…
Ever since first reading Milbank’s Theology and Society Theory , I’ve been intrigued by the work of JG Hamann. A recent brief article by John R. Betz in Modern Theology (April 2004) raised my interest again. Betz reviews Oswald Bayer’s recent Vernunft ist Sprache: Hamanns Metakritik Kants , and provides…
Iain Provan, Philips Long, and Tremper Longman’s A Biblical History of Israel begins with several excellent chapters on OT historiography, and on historiographical issues in general. Some highlights of the discussion (highlights to me at least): 1) The authors challenge the distinction between primary and secondary sources because it is…
For all those readers out there who read Polish: Several of my articles have been translated and published in the Reformacja w Polsce ( Reformation in Poland ), a quaterly published by Evangelical Reformed Church in Wroclaw, Poland. Bogumil Jarmulak sent me the following links: “Why Sacraments” ( Dlaczego sakramenty…
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