Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Genesis 3 ends on a decisive, and decisively negative, note. Yahweh “drove the man out” of the garden, and, in addition, “at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim, and the flaming sword which turned every direction, to guard the way to the tree of life.”…
When she died in 2005 at the age of 72, Anna Haycraft, the author who published under the name Alice Thomas Ellis, was a celebrated writer in Great Britain. While working at Duckworth Publishers(which her husband owned), she produced a dozen novels, a collection of short stories, a cookbook, volumes…
Some have suggested recently that my "project" is postmodern. To clarify my views on postmodernism, I'm re-posting something I wrote in 2005, with a few modifications. For a fuller discussion, you can check out my Solomon among the Postmoderns (Canon, 2008). First, it is helpful to distinguish, as many writers…
Calling Jerusalem the "holy city" comes so naturally to Christians that it comes as something of a surprise to realize how infrequently the phrase is used in Scripture. Not only is Jerusalem rarely called holy, but in the Old Testament this classification is found only in texts that refer to…
Asking why the church doesn’t sing hymns or even why men don’t sing in church is a bit like lamenting over the lame man who can’t waltz on the dance floor. While it is a valid question, the more immediate question would seem to be, “why doesn’t the lame man…
The theme of 1 Timothy is the distinction between the true children in the Household of God and false children who really belong to the household of Satan. This is seen in the fact that in the chiastic structure of the Epistle, heresy is the subject in the center (…
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Duncan Derrett again: Jesus condemns the Pharisees and scribes as “blind men,” and their blindness is a myopia that makes it impossible for them to distinguish between gnats and camels. Both are prohibited foods, but “their throats are wide, their bellies capacious for the unclean.” For all their their obsession…
Duncan Derrett points to the OT background to Jesus’ saying about unclean vessels. According to the law, a vessel was rendered unclean in the interior when an animal dropped into the vessel. Some vessels could be scrubbed clean, others had to be broken (Leviticus 11). A vessel became clean when…
For a number of years, I’ve been using the analogy of marriage to explain apostasy. Turns out I wasn’t the first. Jeremiah does too. Jeremiah uses some variation of the root shub (“turn, return, turn away”) nearly 50 times in his prophecy. One of the specific words is meshubah, translated…
Along with a friend, my son, Jordan, has started an online comic strip. Check it out here every Tuesday and Thursday: http://www.goodtimescomic.blogspot.com/
PROVERBS 26:17 Verse 17 returns to the use of dog imagery. We recall that dogs are scavengers in the Bible, feeding on death. Dogs eat flesh and lap up blood. They are greedy, constantly hungry for more (Isaiah 56:11). They tear things to pieces (Matthew 7:6). In short, they are…
Mike Bull from Australia sends along some comments on my earlier posts about “blood and soil.” The rest of this post is from Mike: “Jesus doesn’t just overcome and send the powers packing. But also, he doesn’t just pacify and reconcile them. He tears them in two, like two goats.…
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