Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Higher critics have, for a long time, posited a Second Isaiah to account for the structural and tone differences in the book from chapter 40 on. Now, we do believe in a Second Isaiah, but believe that the form critics have generally suffered from a lack of imagination both in…
A couple of the most serious mistranslations in our Bibles are found in the book of Leviticus. The main reason these errors have gone unreformed, I believe, is because Leviticus is simply not studied often enough, so the problem has never been fully addressed. The first mistranslation is found right…
Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , is really a parenthesis inside of the larger reality of Christian history. Progress and forward movement inside of science is a footnote to the larger and more general reality of covenant renewals in both Biblical and Christian history. The fundamental mark…
James Jordan, in the June/July 1995 Biblical Horizons, wrote a very helpful essay, "The Great Hangover," the gist of which I entirely agree with. The theme of the essay was that the Church to move forward must shuck off the old husks of Hellenism, Rabbinism, and undo admiration for all…
Traditionally, the three offices in the Presbyterian churches have been teaching elder, ruling elder, and deacon. These have been associated with priest, elder, and Levite respectively. We have seen that the deacon is in fact an apprentice and assistance elder. We have also seen that Levites as well as priests…
John 7:39 interprets Jesus’ offer of living water as an offer of the Spirit to those who believe, "for," John continues, "the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified." John was not making an ontological statement about the Spirit, as if the Spirit did not exist until…
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Peter Berger recently analyzed the state of the Anglican communion in The American Interest . The missionaries who were sent to Africa brought a gospel and Victorian morality. They succeeded in converting many in Africa to Christianity, and these converts conformed their lives to the morals the missionaries taught. Now…
Pericles is a drama of grief, loss, despair, ultimately a drama of joy, recovery and hope. At critical junctures in the play, music and story-telling play a redemptive role. Pericles uses music as a metaphor for love, licit and illicit, in the first scene of the play. When he discovers…
A friend pointed me to this remarkable statement from Augustine's de doctrina Christiana . Augustine is distinguishing between uti and frui , use and enjoyment, emphasizing that the only thing that can be enjoyed in itself, rather than for the sake of something else, is God. He elaborates with a…
Matthew Avery Sutton's American Apocalypse tells the story of American Evangelicalism by telling the story of premillennial apocalyptic eschatology. The approach throws some fresh light on recent history. For example, he links premillennialism to the crusading of the Moral Majority: “As humankind approached the last days, the faithful believed that…
Joshua Kurlantzick defines State Capitalism as “countries whose government has a controlling ownership stake in more than one-third of the 500 largest companies, by revenue, in that country, a situation that gives these governments far greater control over the corporate sector than a government in a more free-market oriented nation…
My daughter MargaretAnn wrote a paper for school on angels in the book of Psalms. She observed that angels do what men do. Angels are fierce warriors (Psalm 78:49), obey God (Psalm 103:20), praise God (Psalm 148:2). This is a summary of what human beings are called to do. The…
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