Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Higher critics have, for a long time, posited a Second Isaiah to account for the structural and tone differences in the book from chapter 40 on. Now, we do believe in a Second Isaiah, but believe that the form critics have generally suffered from a lack of imagination both in…
A couple of the most serious mistranslations in our Bibles are found in the book of Leviticus. The main reason these errors have gone unreformed, I believe, is because Leviticus is simply not studied often enough, so the problem has never been fully addressed. The first mistranslation is found right…
Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , is really a parenthesis inside of the larger reality of Christian history. Progress and forward movement inside of science is a footnote to the larger and more general reality of covenant renewals in both Biblical and Christian history. The fundamental mark…
James Jordan, in the June/July 1995 Biblical Horizons, wrote a very helpful essay, "The Great Hangover," the gist of which I entirely agree with. The theme of the essay was that the Church to move forward must shuck off the old husks of Hellenism, Rabbinism, and undo admiration for all…
Traditionally, the three offices in the Presbyterian churches have been teaching elder, ruling elder, and deacon. These have been associated with priest, elder, and Levite respectively. We have seen that the deacon is in fact an apprentice and assistance elder. We have also seen that Levites as well as priests…
John 7:39 interprets Jesus’ offer of living water as an offer of the Spirit to those who believe, "for," John continues, "the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified." John was not making an ontological statement about the Spirit, as if the Spirit did not exist until…
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Bultmann notoriously claimed that no one who switches on an electric light or uses the cutting edge technology of the “wireless” can believe in a world of demons and angels. That’s not much of an argument, but insofar as it is one, it seems to be: Electric lights show that…
In an elder meeting this week, Doug Wilson pointed to the promise at Noah’s birth that he would bring rest from work and from the toil arising from the cursed ground (Genesis 6:29). Doug made the interesting point that Noah embodies a reconciliation of herder and farmer, of Cain and…
Another student points out the rhetorical effect of the words of the parents of the blind man in John 9. When the Pharisees ask if the blind man was their son, and born blind, they say “Ask him. He is of age.” When they do ask him, the blind man…
Jesus’ trial before Pilate takes place near Passover, but it’s a Day of Atonement, as Barabbas is selected to go free and Jesus sent outside the camp bearing the sins of His people. A student, Stephanie Beauchamp, points to another Day-of-Atonement theme in John’s account. Throughout the narrative, Pilate is…
According to Thomas Heilke, “the church under Constantine is ‘imperialized,’ and made ‘subservient’ to the interests of the empire.” That judgment rests partly on factual errors (e.g., Constantine took charge of the church’s affairs, administered church discipline, decided on orthodoxy by presiding at Nicea). But it also rests on a…
Gerard Schlabach, though working in a Yoderian tradition, warns that wholesale condemnation of “Constantinianism” is a mistake: “there is even something right about the vision of Christendom - as that societas in which every right relationship with God is rightly ordering and reintegrating every relationship and all of life.” Christendom…
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