Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Christmas is a joyful season, but for many it turns into something else. Instead of joy, it is full of disappointment and unhappiness. Instead of an occasion for family fellowship, it becomes an opportunity for opening old wounds, reigniting old arguments, giving new life to rancor that should have died…
The Temple of Time The “covenant-literary matrix” of the Bible is not a pattern imposed upon the text, but the internal logic of its arrangement. This fundamental structure, functioning at multiple levels simultaneously, is a ceaseless reiteration of God’s primary theme. It is an algorithm forged in the furnace of…
In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Exodus, Solomon began to build the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. [1] That the author of Kings should date the start of the building of the temple from the Exodus is noteworthy. In Exodus 15:17, in Moses’ song following the…
Philip Schaff, a German Reformed theologian, states in The Principle of Protestantism that the material principle of Protestantism is “the doctrine of the justification of the sinner before God by the merit of Christ alone through faith.” This is the core message of the Church which leads “to the abandonment…
“Religion” is an attempt to create or build a tower with a top, or to build a temple that is self-contained. The story of The Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 is the story of mankind’s attempt to create a world that is self-contained and does not need God. All…
In the first essay in this series, I presented a case for dating Matthew before AD 70, contrary to the present scholarly consensus. In this essay, I intend to present cultural, personal, ecclesiological, and theological arguments for a very early date for Matthew. [1] The cultural argument concerns literacy in…
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Jim Rogers of Texas A&M responds to my posts about liberalism, where I quoted a couple of passages from a recent essay by John Milbank. Rogers writes: “I do think that there is probably a liberal anthropology that can be criticized in a way similar to Milbank. But sometimes I…
When Jesus tells Peter to forgive “seventy times seven” times, He is only alluding to the climax of God’s dealings with Israel that Daniel prophesied; he is He is also is alluding to Lamech, who threatened to avenge himself “seventy-sevenfold” (Genesis 4:22-23). Lamech was the descendant of Cain. Cain was…
In the first year of Darius, Daniel was studying the book of Jeremiah’s prophecies when he came upon the prophecy that Israel would be released from captivity after 70 years. The 70th year of exile was coming, and so Daniel began fasting in sackcloth and ashes, and be began confessing…
Frederick Beiser’s ( Fate of Reason ) account of Hamann is a mess. He gets the history right (so far as I know it), but his summary of Hamann’s thought is not only mistaken; it’s incoherent. For Hamann, Beiser says, “faith is an immediate experience,” like sense experience, but on…
Hamann does believe, as many postmoderns do, that we have no access to reality without language. But for Hamann this does not mean that we suffer “linguistic claustropobia,” or “outsidelessness.” Dickson again: “the fact that perceiving and understanding are inseparable from speaking is commonsensical; one no more need despair over…
Hamann says that the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation does not, despite its apparent attention to the human author, really honor the author. This is because historical-critical interpretation is “castrated,” removing all passion and kerygmatic intention. Dickson writes, “The desires and kerygmatic intentions of the biblical authors are appreciated, and…
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