Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Suppose that the theistic evolutionists are right, and that the Big Bang Hypothesis is correct. In that case, God originally created a Primeval Atom, which then exploded and congealed to form the present universe. Now, if you had arrived on the scene one quintillionth of a second after God created…
According to Galatians 3, Abraham heard the gospel when the Lord promised that "all the nations shall be blessed in you." Paul quotes here from Genesis 12:3, but the context puts an odd slant on the Old Testament text. Galatians 3 starts with a series of rhetorical questions about the…
Ephesians 2.15: ton vomon twv enotwn en dogmasin katargesas, ina tous duo ktise en autw eis ena kainon anthrwpon, poiwn eirenen having annulled the law of the commandments in decrees, in order that He might create in Him[self] the two into one new man, making peace. The above translation is…
In The Oddness of the Feast of Booths , we saw that the Feast of Booths is a commemoration of the first encampment of Israel at Sukkoth (Booths) in Exodus 12:37, almost certainly the first celebration of the week of Unleavened Bread after the first Passover. The Feast of Booths…
James Jordan has pointed out in Through New Eyes and elsewhere that the Mosaic system of worship comes to an end with the dismemberment of the tabernacle in 1 Samuel 4-6. Because of the sins of Eli and his sons, that priestly family is cut off and the ark is…
In a significant essay in the 19 April 1999 issue of The Weekly Standard, entitled "Wars of Hatred and the Hatred of War," Charles H. Fairbanks, Jr., points out a significant shift that seems to be taking place in the modern world. He begins by asserting his thesis, that a…
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The account of the interactions between Elisha and the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4) includes several episodes, but it is a unified narrative, arranged as a modified chiasm: A. Shunammite woman prepares an upper room for Elisha, 4:8-11. B. Elisha promises the woman a son, 4:12-17 (“Call this Shunammite,” v…
There are some problems in Theodore Jennings’s Outlaw Justice (note my comments here ). But there are many, many insights in Jennings’s consistently political reading of Romans. On the Spirit’s intercession (135), for instance, he writes, that “the traditional translation, [the Spirit] ‘helps us,’ is, I think, flat wrong -…
The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). We hear that, and translate it into: “We do sinful acts; God punishes us with death; the ‘wage’ sin pays is death.” As Lloyd Gaston hints in Paul and the Torah , that doesn’t fit the way Paul uses the word “sin,”…
In his contribution to Galatians and Christian Theology , Oliver O’Donovan explores the flesh-Spirit opposition in Paul’s theology. He observes that flesh is associated with the law and with the elements, and glosses: “A moral law with multiple demands enslaves us. That is the truth of polytheism, explored long ago…
The locust plague that John sees coming from the abyss sounds like an army, chariots and horses rushing into battle (Revelation 9:9). Locusts that sound like chariots have appeared already in Joel (2:5), and the voice of horses is the voice of cherubim (Ezekiel 1:24; 3:13; 10:5). The locust horde…
There’s an enormous amount of chronological information in the Bible, but it is rare for Scripture to date an event by day, month, and year together. It happens at the completion of major construction projects, when worlds are completed - the world of the tabernacle (Exodus 40:17), the temple (2…
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