Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In our first essay in this series ( part 1 ), we saw that Proverbs 30 opens with a puzzle, a cryptic sentence that challenges the reader to search out a matter in order to gain understanding. "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory…
The story of Hezekiah’s illness and recovery is familiar to every child who has attended Sunday School. Informed that he would die, faithful King Hezekiah pleaded in tears for a longer life. God heard his prayers and saw his tears, and promised fifteen more years. As a sign that He…
1. The Blessed Hope "Looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus." Titus 2:13 I was recently asked how I as a postmillennialist would preach on "The Blessed Hope." This is often a sticky question, because postmillennialists believe that…
1. Jeroboam and Ahab After Solomon died, the people came to his son, King Rehoboam, and asked for tax relief. Rehoboam refused to give it, and indeed told the people that he was going to tax them even more severely than his father had. At that point, with the blessing…
One aspect of truth is unity. It was Truth Incarnate who prayed for the unity of His people in John 17, which certainly makes unity a priority for them as well. In one sense, we know by faith that the Church is always invisibly unified in Christ, but there is…
Mr. Paul Miller of Vancouver writes that he is not persuaded by my remarks on Luke 4 on " The Son of Joseph ." He calls attention to Mark 6:1-6, where Jesus came "to His own part of the country," taught in the synagogue, and astonished many. The people said,…
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Orlando Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death begins with the claim that, far from being a “peculiar institution,” slavery is commonplace in history. That’s not surprising. What is counter-intuitive is Patterson’s claim that slavery rose in importance at precisely the moments when civilizations reached their highest development: Slavery “was firmly established…
Airlines lie about what’s wrong with the plane, and how long it will be before it gets boarded, and whether there is enough space for my teeny carry-on in an overhead bin. With all these little lies, it shouldn’t be a surprise when they’re caught in a big one. Still,…
In his contribution to Two Views on the Doctrine of the Trinity , Stephen R. Holmes characterizes the doctrine of the Trinity as a set of hermeneutical guidelines: “What we call the ‘doctrine of the Trinity’ is, I suggest, a formal set of conceptualities developed like this: a set of…
Pastor Rich Lusk made the point in a recent sermon that Jesus’ miraculous feedings of 5000 and 4000 have everything to do with Jew-Gentile issues. Jesus feeds the 5000 in Jewish territory, and the numbers 5 and 12 are linked with Israel - the first the number of Israel’s military…
Paul’s letters follow epistolary conventions of his time, but I suggest that it is just as illuminating, perhaps more, to classify his letters as members of a biblical “genre,” the “prophetic lawsuit” or the “covenant lawsuit.” Covenant lawsuits are embedded in Israel’s covenant-relation with Yahweh. The covenant sets up certain…
Jed Perl doesn’t much like Jeff Koons and his “in-your-face” art. His review of the Whitney retrospective of Koons’s work is a small masterwork of critical scorn. Nothing, Perl writes, nothing is left to the imagination in Koons’s work. Whether he’s sculpting or painting himself having sex with his ex-wife,…
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