Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
[This essay was originally published in 1988. Given the situation that our new national socialists are getting the world into, I thought it might be useful to reprint it here. – JBJordan] The Bible has quite a bit to say about gold, silver, and precious stones, and the Bible always…
I wrote this elsewhere and was encouraged to put it here. It is a comment on what a pastor is. Today, this is not very well understood, and God’s people suffer because of it. There are four professions: medicine, education, law, and religion. Each of these, when done at a…
James Jordan recently pointed out in private conversation how appropriate it is, in John’s Gospel, that Nicodemus is present both to ask Jesus about being born again, and to see Jesus re-enter the womb of the mother. Nicodemus rhetorically asks, “How can a man be born when he is old?…
This is a problematic and much discussed passage. I’ve been discussing it in another forum, and have decided to move it here and present some very preliminary observations about it. One large question is this: Who is the speaker here and what is his situation? Traditionally, the speaker is seen…
1. The current issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction includes a good fantasy novella by John C. Wright, who since his conversion has been writing Christianly. This is a fine fantasy with nods to C. S. Lewis and Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and probably Gene Wolfe as well.…
“It is an experience of our days that the spoken name of Jesus alone exercises an unforeseen power; and the effort which it cost to speak this name is perhaps connected to some faint apprehension of the power which is inherent within it. Wherever the name of Jesus Christ is…
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Darrin Belousek ( Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church ) gives a provocative reading of Isaiah 53’s Suffering Servant. He argues that the passage doesn’t teach a penal substitutionary view of the atonement. He isolates two issues: First, he claims that…
I address the gay marriage debate again this morning at the First Things site .
The dragon in heaven (Revelation 12:3) has seven heads, ten horns, and seven diadems on his seven heads. There’s a lot going on there, no doubt, but faced with a list like that my instinct is to start adding. It turns out to be a useful operation in this case.…
The bride of the Song is a closed garden (4:12), her spices and fruits inaccessible, her springs of living water sealed up. Winds blow over the garden of the bride, spreading her fragrance (v. 16). But no one can feast, or drink, or see her beauties, until the Lover enters…
Commenting on the Song of Songs 4:10, Paul Griffiths ( Song of Songs (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible) , 108-9 ) points out that love’s wound is not only the result of failed love or love’s absence, but inherent in love itself: “As the lover caresses his beloved’s hair…
Six times in Isaiah, things “break forth” ( patsach ). The word means “break,” as in breaking bones (Micah 3:3), but in Zion the things broken always sing. When you compile all the uses in Isaiah, it amounts to a cosmic chorus. The whole earth breaks into song (14:7); heavens,…
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