Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
This was a newspaper column that I wrote for the Minco Millennium back in January of 2000 when I had first moved to Minco, Oklahoma to pastor First Reformed Presbyterian Church. I wasn’t able to catch the recent performance of the musical, Godspell , in Oklahoma City. However, my dad…
Awhile back, there was a big debate among Evangelicals as to whether one had to trust Jesus “as Lord” as well as “as savior. Some claimed that one could be saved by Jesus through a faith that did not involve submission to him as Lord. Others claimed that one must…
I originally wrote this a few weeks ago in April 2002 as a column in the local newspaper, The Minco Millennium under the title “Faith & Follow-Through.” Several passages in the book of Hebrews are difficult for Protestants to swallow. The author affirms the once-and-for-all work of Christ and yet…
N. T. Wright’s commentary on Romans is destined to be a classic. The introduction alone is worth the hefty price of the book — but the exegesis itself is, well, priceless. I will not attempt a full review — these are just miscellaneous thoughts and random reflections — but I…
At an inn in the town of Lystra three men sat around a corner table. All three were well-known disciples of Joshua Messiah, members of what the town called a new cult, the Way. The short gray-haired man with the enormous beard was clearly restless. “This is taking too long,”…
Recently there has been some surprising debate in some circles over where Paul summarizes his Gospel. I say “surprising” because many Evangelical Bible scholars have held, for quite some time, that Paul’s Gospel is encapsulated in Romans chapter 1, verse 3 and 4. Here is the passage in context: Paul,…
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Hamann, describing the Christian giving his heart to God as a renunciation of ownership of his heart: “Here it is my God! You demanded it, as blind, hard, rocky, misguided, and stubborn as it was. Purify it, create it anew, and let it become the workshot of your good Spirit.…
Ken Way of Biola University gave a very interesting paper on the various Hebrew terms for donkeys and mules. He focused on Zechariah 9, which, he argued, has long been mistranslated. It has the largest cluster of donkey terms in the Hebrew Bible, refers to the prophecy concerning Judah in…
Al Wolters gave a very thorough and sophisticated explanation of the term peres in the writing on the wall in Daniel 5. I can’t reproduce it all, but one of the cool things that emerged from it was that the weights mentioned add up to 181, and the date of…
Christian Eberhart of Lutheran Theological Seminary gave a presentation on the nature of sacrifice. I’m not a stickler for method, but there were basic methodological problems with Eberhart’s approach. He started from a definition of sacrifice from Wolfhart Stegeman, which laid out four meanings of the word “sacrifice” in modern…
Lawrence Wellborn gave a fascinating paper on Alain Badiou’s treatment of Paul. I’m not sure I can summarize everything in his rich and wide-ranging paper, but I’ll try to get some of the main themes in the enumerated points below. 1) He began with a summary of what Badiou means…
INTRODUCTION When Jesus comes into the world, He claims that the “time is fulfilled,” and the rest of the New Testament fills this out. With the coming of Jesus, a new age begins. We live in a different time because of Jesus, and this different time should be embodied in…
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