Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Mrs. Marguerite Lane of Grand Rapids writes to ask if I have ever noticed a correlation between the eight beatitudes of Matthew 5 and the eight woes of Matthew 23. I confess that I have not. A glance at various commentators reveals that such a correspondence does not seem to…
1. The words of Agur, the son of Jakeh, the burden. The man declares to Ithiel, to Ithiel and Ucal: 2. Surely I am more stupid than any other man, And I do not have the understanding of a man. 3. And I have not learned wisdom, But I have…
Psalm 137 is widely regarded as one of the meanest of the imprecatory psalms. Certainly as we read it it is seems to be a song of pure vengeance. The exiles in Babylon, in grief over the judgment that Babylon has brought upon them, pray for the destruction of that…
In the Levitical law, the priests received two particular portions of each peace offering: the "wave offering" of the breast and the "heave offering" (or better, "contribution") of the right thigh. The purpose of this essay is to attempt to determine the reason why the second of these, the thigh,…
The story of Jesus’ visit, early in His ministry, to the synagogue in His home town of Nazareth is recorded for us in Luke 4:16-30. You may remember that Jesus read from Isaiah about how the Messiah would preach the gospel, care for the poor, work miracles, and bring in…
(The essay that follows concerns a rather touchy subject: how the Lord’s Supper is to be done. I am not writing to insult or offend, but to challenge. To that end I have not "held back" but have "gone ahead" and said what I think needs to be said —…
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In an article in Bruce McCormack, ed., Justification in Perspective , Carl Trueman makes some helpful comments about the assumptions and consequences of Luther’s views on baptism and justification. “At the heart of Luther’s mature understanding of baptism,” he writes, “as with his mature understanding of justification, is a notion…
The following is largely inspired by Jon D. Levenson’s Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel . In his novel, The Death of Ivan Illych, Leo Tolstoy tells the story of the life and death of his title character. Ivan Illych is a government lawyer who has devoted his life to…
John 21:15: So when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? He said to him, Yes, Lord; You know that I love You. He said to him, Tend my lambs. Jesus’ breakfast on the beach is a…
From beginning to end, from Alpha to Omega, God is a God of life, a God of resurrection. In the beginning, He called into being things that were not. He cried out into the darkness of the first day, so that light dispelled the darkness. He spoke again, and plants…
Resurrection life isn’t only for the future, not only for the end. Because Jesus rose on the third day, and because He poured out His Spirit on us, resurrection life has already begun to spread throughout this world of Sin and Death. Through Jesus and His Spirit, we already live…
More from Targoff, discussing Hamlet’s relation to the differing views of worship in the Elizabethan period. Targoff complains that “what is strikingly, and mistakenly, absent from our accounts of the Elizabethan settlement is precisely what the play interrogates in staging Claudius’s prayer: the belief that external practices might not only…
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