Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The history of the sin of Ham and the curse of Canaan comes in the middle of the Generations of Noah, a section of Genesis that begins at Genesis 6:9 and extends to the closing notice, Genesis 11:9. To understand the story better, it is necessary to get in mind…
This paper was written to persuade people who were members of the Presbyterian Church in America. It should be accessible to anyone who believes in baptizing infants–especially to those who consider themselves a part of the Reformation Tradition. References to “our Confession” or “our standards” invoke the Westmeinster Confession of…
Version 1.2 I write this brief essay in order to address a problem I have encountered. I keep reading explanations of doctrine of the sacraments fundamentally empty of the content which was once held by virtually all Reformed confessions and formulations. Furthermore, I read explanations and commentaries on the Westminster…
We continue our analysis of John Sailhamer’s book *Genesis Unbound: A Provocative New Look at the Creation Account* (Multnomah Books, 1996), which argues that Genesis 1:2ff. is not about the creation of the whole world, but about the preparation of the Land of Eden, which is also the Promised Land.…
III. Death of God’s Firstborn in the real Egypt: This huge chiasm has as its center the betrayal of Peter, as the leader of the disciples himself rejects Jesus. Peter holds an oficial position as high priest among the disciples of the incarnate Lord. His rejection of Jesus is the…
I wrote a response to Rev. Richard Bacon’s tract, What Mean Ye by This Service , a copy of which I borrowed from the library at Covenant Theological Seminary. However, I recently discovered that a new appendix was added to the version available on the Blue Banner’s web page. This…
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The story is told of the desert father Abba Apollo, who was appalled when he encountered a devil without knees. John Ratzinger wrote of this story “The inability to kneel is seen as the very essence of the diabolical.”
Malcolm Ruel, again in the Blackwell Reader in the anthropology of religion, traces the changing meanings of “faith.” For the Hebrew Bible, ‘mn “denotes . . . a quality of relationship: it was used of the reliability or trustworthiness of a servant, a witness, messenger, or a prophet, but is…
Asad identifies the particular moment when “Christianity” (in the pejorative sense I’ve used it) was invented: In the wake of the post-Reformation wars, Lord “Herbert produced a substantive definition of what later came to be formulated as Natural Religion - in terms of beliefs (about a supreme power), practices (its…
The aforementioned reader in anthropology of religion includes Talal Asad’s essay on the construction of “religion” as an anthropological concept. He argues that it is usually assumed, for instance, that medieval “religion” was the same in essence as modern religion, but that “its social extension and function were different in…
The second edition of the Blackwell Reading in the Anthropology of Religion (edited, Michael Lambek) looks to be a great resource, for those who like such things. There are classic essays from Tylor, Durkheim, Weber, and Geertz, Wittgenstein on Frazer, Susanne Langer on symbols and Mary Douglas on clean and…
In his Theology of the New Testament (Zondervan, 2005), Frank Thielman responds to the claim that justification is secondary to participation with Christ in Paul’s theology. Thielman does not agree, but he does say that it is true that “Paul’s references to the death of Christ more often support his…
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