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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Chris Rojek describes celebrity as “the attribution of glamorous or notorious status to an individual within the public sphere.” He recognizes there are other forms of celebrity: the “ascribed” celebrity of inherited status (Prince William, eg), and the “achieved” celebrity of an accomplished musician or writer or actor or sports…
Dogmatics, according to Barth (CD, I, 1), is the correction, clarification, and criticism of church proclamation by measuring proclamation against the Word of God in the Bible. Dogmatics is a second-order form of thought and reflection. It is not the same as the proclamation of the church; it is a…
I’ve read this paragraph from the introduction to Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory dozens of times, but it’s still thrilling. “The pathos of modern theology is its false humility. For theology, this must be a fatal disease, because once theology surrenders its claim to be a meta-discourse, it cannot any…
I’ve read this paragraph from the introduction to Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory dozens of times, but it’s still thrilling. “The pathos of modern theology is its false humility. For theology, this must be a fatal disease, because once theology surrenders its claim to be a meta-discourse, it cannot any…
If “we have never been modern,” why do we all say we have? Why do we say we’re living in an iron cage, that the world has been secularized and disenchanted, that religion has passed its sell-by date? Perhaps we just like to beat ourselves up. Or, perhaps the notion…
If “we have never been modern,” why do we all say we have? Why do we say we’re living in an iron cage, that the world has been secularized and disenchanted, that religion has passed its sell-by date? Perhaps we just like to beat ourselves up. Or, perhaps the notion…
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