Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The god of Israel was not just any god. Two thousand years of Christian history, with it’s besetting philosophical temptations, and full-blown deist and transcendentalist and universalist problems, have obscured the fact that, in itself, the identity of the true god (or gods) cannot be predetermined, any more than the…
Jacob and Solomon God gave wealth and possessions to Jacob, and then threatened to take them all away at Peniel. Jacob wrestled with God, and through prayer Jacob saw through the crisis by faith and was made victor (Hosea 12:4). The Kingdom period in Israel concerns the same themes. We…
In our study of the historical impact and unfolding of the Ten Words of God, we now arrive at the Third Word. The Third Word prohibits hypocrisy, and when we realize this, we can see right away that disobeying the Third Word is closely tied to the situation of Israel…
Abraham and Joshua In our previous two essays, we considered aspects of the lives of Abraham and Jacob, as these display how God works with men in history. These two men carry in themselves all the future of Israel, so to speak, and their lives at the individual level correspond…
Part 5: Laying New Foundations in a Dying World (continued) Physical Training Though it is seldom recognized any more, the fact is that no liberal arts and no science is possible apart from peace, and peace is only possible if there is a strong military presence that protects a nation.…
Last month, in our essay " Patriarchal Dominion ," we observed the flow from Abraham to Jacob to Joseph. Our concern here is to advance our understanding of that narrative flow. I should mention that I am assuming much that is found in my book Primeval Saints: Studies in the…
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After summing up Ong’s work on Ramus, Johannes Fabian ( Time and the Other ) suggests an analogy between Ramist pedagogy and anthropology: “Having learned more about the connections between printing and diagrammatic reduction of the contents of thought, one is tempted to consider the possibility that anthropological kinship theories…
The Pharisaical practice of washing before meals is legally odd (as pointed out by Roger Booth, Jesus and the Laws of Purity ). The one explicit reference to the need for laymen to wash hands is Leviticus 15:11 doesn’t have to do with food or with victims of uncleanness. Leviticus…
Ernst Lohmeyer ( Lord of the Temple ) argues that Jesus’ saying on defilement in Mark 7 (=Matthew 15) “transfers the whole question of purity from the plant of material externals to that of man’s inner self . . . . there emerges in unmistakable superiority the inner world of…
Matthew 14:22-16:12 is arranged in a chiastic pattern, repeatedly focusing on food but centering on Jesus’ healing ministry: A. Crossing the sea, 14:22-36 B. Pharisees and scribes question Jesus about washing before meals, 15:1-20 C. Jesus gives crumbs to the Canaanite woman, 15:21-29 D. Jesus heals the multitudes, 15:29-31 C’.…
On clear nights, I can see the Milky Way stretching across the sky from my drive way. Since the mid-nineteenth century, fewer and fewer have easy sight of the night sky. In Hong Kong, the buildings stretch and loom so high that the streets below are a cavernous indoor mall,…
Jay notes that the mid-19th century witnessed shift in the setting of “oracularcentric spectacle” from the “aristocratic court” to the “bourgeois equivalent in the massive sheet glass windows [of department stories] displaying a wealth of commodities to be coveted, and, if money allowed, consumed. Here the dandies’ quest to distinguish…
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