Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Matthew 8-9 records three clusters of miracles, interspersed with snatches of Jesus’ teaching about various aspects of discipleship. Just as the Sermon on the Mount displays the authority of Jesus’ Word in teaching, these chapters display the authority of Jesus’ Word over sickness, uncleanness, the creation, demons, and death. In…
Since the early 1980s, several of the conservative Reformed Churches have debated and wrestled with the issue of paedocommunion (infant communion). The PCA and the OPC assigned study committees to examine the question, both of which produced useful reports both in support of and against the position. Though the debate…
(This issue of Biblical Chronology concludes a discussion of the Biblical and Assyrian chronologies, begun in previous posts. Click on the category link of "Biblical Chronology" above to see previous issues. Did Shalmaneser Know Jehu? Allis writes: "The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser contains, in addition to brief accounts of the…
Movies Movies as an art form have a powerful impact because they take place in a dark room, on a large screen, with no distractions, and because they entail many of the arts: music, acting, choreography, design and color, etc. A movie can be an overwhelming experience for a young…
The Hebrew word translated as "grain offering" or "cereal offering" is minchah . Like the translation of `olah as "burnt offering," the translation of minchah as "grain offering" is somewhat deceiving, since minchah does not refer to grain or cereal. In liturgical contexts outside of Leviticus, in fact, the word…
"He shall then skin the burnt offering and cut it into its pieces" (Leviticus 1:6). The normal word ( `olah ) that is translated as "burnt offering" and "whole burnt offering" has nothing to do with either burning or wholeness. It is the noun form of a verb meaning "to…
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M ary Eberstadt doesn't believe we're in a war of the religious v. the secular. In an adapted excerpt from her newly-released It's Dangerous To Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies , she argues that the battle is between “competing faiths: one in the Good Book, and the other in…
I an Morris puts the discontent with Western elites, reflected most dramatically in Britain's departure from the E.U., in a larger historical perspective. “Throughout history, when things have gone wrong, people have blamed their leaders,” Morris writes. “In the West, things are now going wrong more than they used to,…
I n his long-anticipated and dramatically-completed (read the Preface) Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels , Richard B. Hays devotes a few pages to the parable of the vineyard as recounted in Mark 12. He observes, as every commentator does, that Jesus is the son who is finally sent to…
P lace, writes Robert Pogue Harrison ( The Dominion of the Dead ), is established by a hic jacet : “here lies” the body of my ancestors. To this the gospel poses a direction challenge: When the women show up at the tomb of Jesus, angels tell them hic non…
D on't participate in ( sugkoinoneo ) darkness, Paul says (Ephesians 5:11). Communion with darkness is fruitless, sterile ( akarpos ). Instead of communing with the works of darkness, instead of joining them in one dead flesh, we are to “expose” the works of darkness. Elegcho , “expose,” can also…
I n an essay on “The Evangelical Subversion of Myth,” René Girard examines Matthew 23:27, Jesus's comparison of the Pharisees to whited sepulchers, and Jesus's condemnation of the Pharisees who are sons of those who kill the prophets. On the last passage, Girard cleverly observes that the Pharisees' effort to…
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