Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
"Vanity of vanities", says the Preacher. "All is vanity". Life, we are told in the book of Ecclesiastes, is a repetitious, wearisome cycle; all that is and all that will be has already been. There is nothing new under the sun. What is crooked cannot be made straight, what is…
The Bible tells us that when God created the earth, He set up three zones of life. The first was the world itself. The second was the holy land of Eden. And the third was the Garden in Eden, God’s sanctuary. God told Adam and Eve that every tree was…
In our survey of Biblical chronology we have arrived at the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, which provide chronological information for the period after the return from exile, the Restoration Period of Old Testament history. The question we begin to address in this essay is whether the Artaxerxes of these…
These verses from the Sermon on the Mount are generally taken in connection with Jesus’ earlier statement concerning adultery in the heart (vv. 27-28); the eye and the hand have obvious relevance to the sin of adultery. At the same time, most commentators admit that the principle of avoiding occasions…
17. The eye that mocks a father, And despises to obey a mother, The ravens of the valley will pick it out, And the young eagles will eat it. 18. There are three things that are too wonderful for me, Four that I do not understand: 19. The way of…
The modern Church in America and virtually everywhere else is ideology-centered, not geographical. This is because various Churches believe different things and have different customs of worship and sacraments. The ideological Church has gradually developed from the time of the Reformation, because accuracy of doctrine has become more important to…
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Jesus is described twice in Revelation as the “root of David” (5:5; 22:16). “Son of David” or “Seed of David” makes sense; Jesus comes from the Davidic line. But Jesus is not only the fruit, but the root of the Davidic house. He is the original Anointed One before who…
In a 1984 JBL article, Elizabeth Struthers Malbon suggested that the boat in Mark’s gospel represents a “mediator” between sea and land, and pointed out that Jesus treats the sea as if it were land (walking on it, showing no concern for the unsteadiness of the waves, etc.). If we…
PROVERBS 21:20 The verse could be translated, more woodenly, as “Stores desired and oil in the habitation of the wise; but the foolish Adam swallows it.” The verse contrasts the conduct of the wise and of the foolish, and the basic contrast is between the wise man who has things…
Well, a bit of looking pays off. One Justin Champion has written a study of priestcraft in early Enlightenment England, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken (Cambridge 1992), which is available in its entirety online at: http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/catalogue/viewcat.php?id=OTHE00029. Chapter 5 begins with a paragraph that links the attacks on priestcraft with the…
Writing of Spinoza, Jonathan Israel ( Radical Enlightenment ) notes that Spinoza outlines “the concept of priestcraft as a system of organized imposture and deception, rooted in credulousness and superstitution, which loomed so large in the subsequent history of the Enlightenment and was to receive massive amplification in the books…
Not of the Hitchens-Dawkins-Harris variety, but of the seventeenth century variety. The four figures most often attacked for formulating a thoroughgoing atheistic perspective were Spinoza (for his biblical work as well as his metaphysics), Hobbes, La Peyrere (author of Pre-Adamites ), and Lodewijk Meyer (author of Philosophia Scripturae Interpres ).…
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