Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For many people the date October 31 is significant not only for being the Eve of All Saints (All Hallows Eve, Halloween) but as the day in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg. These theses were a list of…
It has become routine in October for some Christian schools to send out letters warning parents about the evils of Halloween, and it has become equally routine for me to be asked questions about this matter. "Halloween" is simply a contraction for All Hallows’ Eve. The word "hallow" means "saint,"…
The following is an excerpt from Peter Leithart's forthcoming two-volume commentary on Revelation (T&T Clark). Y ou must prophesy again concerning many peoples and nations and tongues and kings,” a voice tells John (Rev. 10:11). Then someone gives him a “reed like a rod” and instructs him to measure (11:1).…
Josiah is an ideal Davidic king in many ways. He not only “did right,” but he “walked in the ways of his father David” and “did not turn aside to the right or to the left” (2 Chronicles 34:2). At the age of 16, he began to seek Yahweh, and…
One of the best discussions of Augustine’s views on time comes from Jeremy Begbie’s Theology, Music, and Time (ch. 3). Following Paul Ricoeur, Begbie claims that Augustine’s distentio “is conceived as the three-fold present, and the threefold present as distentio . The distentio consists in the non-coincidence of the mind’s…
This has always been the position of the Christian Church, and from an historical perspective the present situation in evangelicalism is appalling. The early liturgies of the Church, which are still used in Episcopal and Lutheran worship, are laced with psalm phrases. The early hymns, such as the Te Deum…
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In his Natural History of Religion, David Hume proposes an evolutionary progress from natural polytheism to more developed monotheism. This, he thinks, is the natural and virtually inevitable progress: “As far as writing or history reaches, mankind, in ancient times, appears universally to have been polytheists” and idolaters. It makes…
Protestant problematics about sacraments still run in the background of early modern debates about religion. In response to evidence of similarities between Jewish and “savage” Indian religion, some early modern thinkers argued that the ritual similarities were marginal to Judaism. Some thought of Jewish ceremonies as a kind of prophylactic…
Many scholars have concluded that the Jubilee legislation of Leviticus 25 is an idealized portrait of an institution that Israel never practiced. In a 2003 essay in Vetus Testamentum , Lee Casperson takes issue with this viewpoint: “There are extensive parallels in the ancient Near East, long predating the entry…
Leigh Trevaskis tries to suss out the rationale for sticking Leviticus 24 (menorah, showbread, blasphemy) between Leviticus 23 (Israel’s festival calendar) and Leviticus 25 (Jubilee). He proposes a symbolic solution to the puzzle. He observes that chapter 24 begins with a reverence to “light” (v. 2), alluding back to the…
Esther Lightcap Meek presents the most devastating little critiques of epistemological dualism I’ve ever read near the beginning of A Little Manual for Knowing . Epistemological dualism describes the way we “distinguish knowledge from beliefs, facts from values, reason from faith, theory from application, thought from emotion, mind from body,…
Halbertal ( On Sacrifice , 72-3) offers this fine analysis of the self-justificating moves of aggressors: “The mind can play complicated games, and among them is the accusation that an aggressor directs toward his victim for causing him to become violent, which all too easily turns into a justification for…
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