Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
WHAT IS THE OT PRECURSOR OF THE NT OFFICE OF PASTOR? HOW DOES THE FORMER ILLUMINATE THE LATTER? The first problem to address is: how do we know that there is an office of pastor in the New Testament? 1 Perhaps the way the question is put may permit me…
[This essay was originally published in December, 1981, in The Biblical Educator , a publication of the Institute for Christian Economics, and again with slight revisions in Contra Mundum 7 (Spring, 1993). It is reprinted here as a supplement to my book Creation in Six Days .] In 1979, Dr.…
Anyone seeking to reverse the meaning of this promise needs to come to grips not only with the phrase "God was with the lad" later on, but also with Hagar’s response in 16:13. She worships Yahweh, putting her trust in Him and obeying Him. In fact, Hagar is at the…
Ishmael is the narrator of Melville’s fantasy-romance Moby Dick. Melville takes up the traditional view of Ishmael as a wayward son of Abraham, driven out solely because of the Divine "caprice" of election, an angry man with his hand raised against all other men. He is a fitting "anti-hero," or…
There were five cities at the center of the Canaanite culture in the circle of the Jordan, a place like the Garden of Eden, like the land of Egypt, before it became the Dead Sea at the destruction of the cities (Genesis 13:10). Genesis 14:2 tells us their names: Sodom,…
Meditations by James B. Jordan Genesis 19, the destruction of Sodom and the rescue of Lot, is part two of a story that begins in Genesis 18. These two chapters happen in one 24-hour period: noon and evening in Mamre, and midnight and daybreak in Sodom. God and two angels…
Showing page 244 of 309
Showing page 7 of 43
Historians do not make the periods of history, argues Rosenstock-Huessy ( Out of Revolution , 689ff). The seams of history are made by people who experience upheaval, and commemorate those experiences in monuments, memory, and calendar. Yet the historian has his place, one marked out first by Thucydides: “He corrects…
Rosenstock-Huessy offers an intriguing analysis of the triumph of the “French” myth of the Renaissance ( Out of Revolution , 699-705). For starters, he gives a bleak summary of Europe between 1450 and 1517, “one of the ugliest and darkest hours of the past”: “The growth of the cities ceased…
Tim Judah continues his reporting on Ukraine : “What we saw in the Orange Revolution, and what we are seeing now, is a fight for the very soul of Ukraine, a country of some 45.5 million people that stretches between the eastern marches of the European Union to the western…
There are two temple sermons in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah himself preaches at the gate of the temple (Jeremiah 7), warning that the house of Yahweh has become a “den of thieves” (v. 11) and that the Lord will do to His house “as He did to Shiloh” (v.…
Psalm 107 repeats the same phrase four times: “then they cried out to Yahweh in their trouble, He saved them from their distress” (vv. 6, 13, 19, 28). There are four forms of distress: Some wander in a wilderness, hungry and thirsty, unable to find their way to a city…
Inequality is a big theme these days. Alister Heath writes to remind us that not all inequality is equal . Some inequality arises inevitably because of disparities of talent, opportunity, risk, etc. Heath focuses on the inequality that arises when people cozy up to power in order to use that…
Showing page 700 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
