Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The first commandment given in the Levitical sacrificial legislation has to do with the animals appropriate to sacrifice: "When any man of you brings an offering to the Lord, you shall bring your offering of cattle ( behemah ), from the herd or the flock" (Lev. 1:2). Cattle alone were…
This post was originally posted in 2004 The ultimate condemnation of a position in Reformed circles is to show that it “leads back to Rome.” Indeed, one gets the feeling that Rome is a worse destination for a Presbyterian than even hell itself. The accusation of Rome stings deeply, of…
There are countless scholars who have helped me in my reading of various passages of Scripture. I have gleaned insights and keys from them that have unlocked texts that once perplexed me. However, no scholar has done so much to teach me how to read the Scripture more generally than…
The Tortoise and the Hare is perhaps the most well-known of the Greek fables. Its story has been present in every era of human history. From the Indigenous retellings with hummingbirds and cranes to the Biblical account of David and Goliath, the basic furniture of an unlikely hero tale is…
Sexual sins are perhaps the most shame-inducing sins experienced by Christians and non-Christians alike. All sins can bring shame, but sexual sins are deeply personal and affect us in profound ways. For example, adultery leaves its victim devastated by betrayal; porn addiction leaves men feeling gross, pathetic, and lazy; losing…
If the mark of a good book is how many times a person can re-read it with pleasure, Richard Adams’ novel Watership Down is one of the best books of the 20 th century. I’ve taught this book in my middle school literature class for the past three years, and…
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The church calendar is essentially a calendar of feast days, preceded by days of preparation for feasting. Advent is a time of preparation for the feast of Christmas, when we celebrate the Father’s gift of His Son; Lent is a time of preparation for the feast of Easter, when we…
Kumar argues that postmodernism is characterized by a contempt for the past, and by an embrace of the “depthless present.” The result is an obsession with space: “The plane of the timeless present is the spatial. If things do not get their significance from their place in history, they can…
Ulrich Beck suggests that the contemporary world is less post-modern than radicalized modernity, a modernity that has become self-conscious and self-reflexive. He writes: “Just as modernization dissolved the structure of feudal society in the nineteenth century and produced the industrial society, modernization today is dissolving industrial society and another modernity…
Though not altogether obvious in English, the names Jehoahaz and Ahaziah are variations of the same name (cf. 2 Kings 13). Jeho = iah, both references to Yahweh’s name, and the verb “ahaz” is common to both. “Ahaz” means “to seize, to lay hold,” and the name “Yah lays hold”…
Many Christians observe the last few Sundays before Lent as “pre-Lenten” Sundays. This might look slightly daft: After all, Lent is itself a period of preparation for Easter, and if we need a time of preparation for the time of preparation, perhaps we also need a pre-pre-Lent to prepare for…
Ihab Hassan contrasted modernism and postmodernism by reference to Authority and Anarchy. He suggested, in Kumar’s summary, that postmodernism “involved a tendency toward ‘Indeterminacy,’ a compound of pluralism, eclecticism, randomness and revolt. Indeterminacy also connoted ‘deformation,’ a stress on decreation, difference, discontinuity and ‘detotalization’ which together add up to a…
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