Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Christmas is a joyful season, but for many it turns into something else. Instead of joy, it is full of disappointment and unhappiness. Instead of an occasion for family fellowship, it becomes an opportunity for opening old wounds, reigniting old arguments, giving new life to rancor that should have died…
The Temple of Time The “covenant-literary matrix” of the Bible is not a pattern imposed upon the text, but the internal logic of its arrangement. This fundamental structure, functioning at multiple levels simultaneously, is a ceaseless reiteration of God’s primary theme. It is an algorithm forged in the furnace of…
In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Exodus, Solomon began to build the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. [1] That the author of Kings should date the start of the building of the temple from the Exodus is noteworthy. In Exodus 15:17, in Moses’ song following the…
Philip Schaff, a German Reformed theologian, states in The Principle of Protestantism that the material principle of Protestantism is “the doctrine of the justification of the sinner before God by the merit of Christ alone through faith.” This is the core message of the Church which leads “to the abandonment…
“Religion” is an attempt to create or build a tower with a top, or to build a temple that is self-contained. The story of The Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 is the story of mankind’s attempt to create a world that is self-contained and does not need God. All…
In the first essay in this series, I presented a case for dating Matthew before AD 70, contrary to the present scholarly consensus. In this essay, I intend to present cultural, personal, ecclesiological, and theological arguments for a very early date for Matthew. [1] The cultural argument concerns literacy in…
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Late dating of the gospels is historically preposterous. Even the most “conservative” dating assumes that Jewish Christians, who believed that the long-awaited salvation had finally occurred in Jesus, would wait over a decade before putting an ordered account on paper. On the contrary: The very first thing a Jew would…
Steve Martin, The Pleasure of My Company . New York: Hyperion, 2003. 163 pp. In his second novel, Steve Martin (yes, the actor) tells the story of the “redemption” of Daniel Pecan Cambridge. Daniel is a narcissistic neurotic so frightened of walking off curbs that he maps out a serpentine…
As mentioned in an earlier post, Paul says that God works out salvation through the cross and resurrection so that “God might BE just and the justifier of those who are of the faith of Jesus.” That “be” is crucial; God would not BE just if He did not manifest…
As mentioned in an earlier post, Paul says that God works out salvation through the cross and resurrection so that “God might BE just and the justifier of those who are of the faith of Jesus.” That “be” is crucial; God would not BE just if He did not manifest…
Eucharistic Meditation, Feb 1: Luke 17:26-29 Jesus describes the coming of the Son of Man by comparing it to the coming of the flood in the days of Noah and the rain of fire and brimstone on Sodom in the days of Lot. One of the main points of the…
Exhortation for February 1: Jesus has many things to say about faith in our sermon text this morning. One of the main things has to do with the power of faith: He says that anyone who has faith the size of a mustard seed can say to a deeply rooted…
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