Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
"Vanity of vanities", says the Preacher. "All is vanity". Life, we are told in the book of Ecclesiastes, is a repetitious, wearisome cycle; all that is and all that will be has already been. There is nothing new under the sun. What is crooked cannot be made straight, what is…
The Bible tells us that when God created the earth, He set up three zones of life. The first was the world itself. The second was the holy land of Eden. And the third was the Garden in Eden, God’s sanctuary. God told Adam and Eve that every tree was…
In our survey of Biblical chronology we have arrived at the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, which provide chronological information for the period after the return from exile, the Restoration Period of Old Testament history. The question we begin to address in this essay is whether the Artaxerxes of these…
These verses from the Sermon on the Mount are generally taken in connection with Jesus’ earlier statement concerning adultery in the heart (vv. 27-28); the eye and the hand have obvious relevance to the sin of adultery. At the same time, most commentators admit that the principle of avoiding occasions…
17. The eye that mocks a father, And despises to obey a mother, The ravens of the valley will pick it out, And the young eagles will eat it. 18. There are three things that are too wonderful for me, Four that I do not understand: 19. The way of…
The modern Church in America and virtually everywhere else is ideology-centered, not geographical. This is because various Churches believe different things and have different customs of worship and sacraments. The ideological Church has gradually developed from the time of the Reformation, because accuracy of doctrine has become more important to…
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The sea beast wages war against the saints (Revelation 13:7), assisted by the land beast (13:11-15), also known as the “false prophet” (16:13; 19:20; 20:10). That the land beast is a prophet gives us a big clue to what’s happening. Prophets end and initiate covenants; prophets are the sacred architects…
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,…
Robert Pogue Harrison glances at his father’s college yearbook and finds that “twelve-year-old boys looked like little adults, their faces furrowed by the depths of time” ( Juvenescence , x). We’re younger now: “the first-world face of today remains callow, even as it withers away with age, never attaining the…
Neoteny comes from two Greek words, “new” and “hold.” As Robert Pogue Harrison defines it ( Juvenescence , 18), evolutionary biology speaks of neoteny as the “persistence of fetal, larval, or juvenile features in adult organisms.” Harrison means something more broader, “a modified type of development that brings juvenile traits…
John’s description of the land beast and his work in Revelation 13:11-15 is organized in a fairly neat chiasm: A. Another beast like a lamb, speaking as a dragon, 13:11 B. He has the authority of the first beast, 13:12a C. He makes land-dwellers worship the first beast, who was…
Robert McAfee Brown summarizes The Spirit of Protestantism as “an openness to the judging and renewing activity of the living God made known in Jesus Christ.” It’s a willingness to “submit to the corrective activity of God,” and “to live at risk.” Protestantism claims that it’s only in “constant renewal…
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