Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I was still a high school student the first time I read Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, but I will never forget the powerful impact the book had on me. Of course, as a second year student, I did not fully digest the book. In spite of subsequent readings, I…
Crises force questions of identity. Identities may remain assumed until some event, or series of events, challenge what may have been taken for granted. The search for identity is an anxious one precisely because it tends to happen in times of upheaval and uncertainty. In his recent book, Orthoxox Anglican…
Peter Leithart recently wrote a fascinating short piece about the Half Shekel Temple Tax as an atonement. Leithart argues three main points. First that the Sanctuary Shekel was heavier, i.e., more valuable than the everyday shekel. Second, he offers some analysis about the order of magnitude of the purchasing power…
There is no denial from the careful reader that 1 Samuel 24 and 26 are telling the same story. Perhaps we should say, virtually the same story. But that the stories are cut from the same cloth is undeniable. What we have over these three chapters—1 Samuel 24-26—is a very…
In his novel That Hideous Strength , C.S. Lewis is able to masterfully illustrate in narrative form so many of his insights about the subversive dangers of Leftist political dogma to Christian civilization. Perceptive essays from Lewis like “The Abolition of Man” and “The Inner Ring” are fleshed out in…
At a very practical level, the Evangelical Church has been injected with counterfeit spiritualities. We are a people looking for a city, whose builder may only be in office for four years. Our temptation to veer to the side of the temporal is striking in our day, especially as the…
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After the flood, Noah builds an altar ( mizbeach ) offers ascension offerings ( ya’al ‘oloth ). It’s the first altar and the first ascension offering in biblical history (Genesis 8:20). Noah is the first king, the first to be given authority to shed human blood, the first to drink…
Leviticus 1:7-9 describes the arrangement of animal parts for an ‘olah , an “ascension” offering. It’s a double or triple layering of the animal: head, suet, and entrails-and-legs; or, as a double structure with the entrails and legs set off from head and suet by the water barrier. Mary Douglas…
The peace offering is the one offering that a worshiper eats from. It is the offering of the marriage feast. But that’s not the thing that gets emphasized in chapter 3. What gets emphasized instead is the fat . The word is used 12 times in the chapter. These are…
Mary Douglas ( Leviticus as Literature ) explains the connections between the qereb , the inner parts of the animal, and the inner sanctuary of the tabernacle: “The Bible locates the emotions and thought in the innermost parts of the body; the loins are wrung with remorse or grief; the…
David Janzen ( Social Meanings of Sacrifice ) follows other scholars in bringing attention to “the relation between sacrifice and the importance of order.” He cites Jon Levenson’s comment that God “acts like an Israelite priest in the act of separation ( hbdyl ) of the various categories of created…
In a recent issue of Review of Biblical Literature, Lars Kierspel offers this commend on Pentecostal theologian William Atkinson’s Baptism in the Spirit , a monograph on the debate about James Dunn’s Baptism in the Holy Spirit . He argues that Atkinson errs in detaching the gift of the Spirit…
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