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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In his fascinating Faith of Our Fathers , Chan Kei Thong points to many biblical images embedded in Chinese characters. His argument could be made even stronger by looking at Hebrew terminology. For instance, he says of the character “zui,” which means sin, that “The top part is . .…
At the beginning of the Great Sacrifice performed by the Chinese emperor for centuries, singers sang the song of creation, addressed to the “Sovereign Lord” known as “Shang Di”: “Of old in the beginning, there was the great chaos, without form and dark. The five planets had not begun to…
One of the differences between those associated with “Federal Vision” theology and those opposed to it is a difference of theological imagination. The opponents operate with a theological imagination that distinguishes and clarifies; ontology is distinguished from relationality, nature from supernature, ecclesiology from soteriology. On the other side are theologians…
According to Adolf Loos, a turn of the 20th-century Viennese architect and critic, modern style combines beauty and practicality. Both are necessary: “By beautiful, what we mean is that something has achieved fullness, completion. But no useless, impractical object can really be described as ‘full’ or ‘complete.’” One can imagine…
Some initial observations on Nobuyoshi Kiuchi’s recent commentary on Leviticus in the Apollos series from IVP. 1) Kiuchi intriguingly translates hata and hatta’t , traditionally rendered in terms of “sin” or “purification” in terms of “hiding”: ” hata and hatta’t mean ‘to hide oneself’ and the condition of ‘hiding oneself,’…
A student points out that Hebrews 1-2:4 contains seven quotations from the Old Testament. Through these seven words, God speaks His Son as the new creation.
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