Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
WHAT IS THE OT PRECURSOR OF THE NT OFFICE OF PASTOR? HOW DOES THE FORMER ILLUMINATE THE LATTER? The first problem to address is: how do we know that there is an office of pastor in the New Testament? 1 Perhaps the way the question is put may permit me…
[This essay was originally published in December, 1981, in The Biblical Educator , a publication of the Institute for Christian Economics, and again with slight revisions in Contra Mundum 7 (Spring, 1993). It is reprinted here as a supplement to my book Creation in Six Days .] In 1979, Dr.…
Anyone seeking to reverse the meaning of this promise needs to come to grips not only with the phrase "God was with the lad" later on, but also with Hagar’s response in 16:13. She worships Yahweh, putting her trust in Him and obeying Him. In fact, Hagar is at the…
Ishmael is the narrator of Melville’s fantasy-romance Moby Dick. Melville takes up the traditional view of Ishmael as a wayward son of Abraham, driven out solely because of the Divine "caprice" of election, an angry man with his hand raised against all other men. He is a fitting "anti-hero," or…
There were five cities at the center of the Canaanite culture in the circle of the Jordan, a place like the Garden of Eden, like the land of Egypt, before it became the Dead Sea at the destruction of the cities (Genesis 13:10). Genesis 14:2 tells us their names: Sodom,…
Meditations by James B. Jordan Genesis 19, the destruction of Sodom and the rescue of Lot, is part two of a story that begins in Genesis 18. These two chapters happen in one 24-hour period: noon and evening in Mamre, and midnight and daybreak in Sodom. God and two angels…
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Anyone wanting to spend some time in the fourth century should check out Fourth Century Christianity at www.fourthcentury.com, which is sponsored by the History Department of Wisconsin Lutheran College and directed by Glen Thompson. The site has chronological charts, original documents or links to other web sites with original documents…
Timothy Barnes, summarizing Lactantius’s objections to Diocletian, writes that “Diocletian possessed great political sagacity, for he had the enviable ability to garner for himself the credit for actions which proved popular while saddling others with responsibility for failures or mistakes.”
I’ve expanded my consideration of the “culture wars” in the age of Obama on the First Things web site: http://www.firstthings.com.
Emphasizing the necessity of starting with the fact of revelation rather than the abstract possibility, Barth charges that “consciously or unconsciously, the Neo-Protestant tradition, in which Lessing, Kant, and Schleiermacher sought access to Christ along a road that could not lead to Him.”
Scripture gives us two “synoptic problems” - the problem of harmonizing the gospels and the problem of harmonizing Kings and Chronicles. That is, the history of the kingdom and the history of Jesus are each told more than once. The parallel is intriguing. It suggests that the two histories are…
Bavinck makes the interesting, Augustinian, and important point that sin can never become our essence because it is not a substance: “it does indeed inhabit and infect all of us, but it is not and cannot be the essence of our humanity. Also, after the fall, we human beings remain…
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