Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
John the Baptist says, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me . . . will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire (Mt. 3:11).” Much debate surrounds the nature of this statement and what exactly it prophesies. Sacramental, baptistic, and charismatic Christians…
First Corinthians is not considered one of the Pastoral Epistles, but there is much to learn from Paul about pastoring a congregation by the way he writes to the Corinthians. Briefly, 1 Corinthians is an exposition of the cross and resurrection. In the first fourteen chapters, Paul gives an exposition…
Fredrik Hagglund ( Isaiah 53 in the Light of Homecoming After Exile (Forschungen Zum Alten Testament) ) argues against the common notion that Isaiah 53 is about the atoning suffering of Yahweh’s Servant. The Servant’s suffering is vicarious (i.e., he suffers for the sins of others) but it is not…
With the inheritance of Canaan and the dividing up of this priestly territory among the tribes, Israel became a microcosm of the nations of the world. This division between Israel and the nations as a substitutionary “land and sea” would prevent another global rebellion, and thus another global judgment. ((For…
One of the more revealing aspects of Paul and James’ soteriology is the different ways they both use Genesis 15:6 (“And Abraham believed God and it was counted for him as righteousness,”) as a proof text to defend their comments about the gospel. The key observation to make is that…
The disintegration of the EU is not the end of the world. It is a sign that the end of the world is anything but nigh. Western culture as we know it is dying at the hands of usurpers, traitors and prodigals. Even the worst rulers throughout Christian history at…
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Ian McEwan’s Saturday is from one angle a novelization of Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” which also figures prominently (if improbably) into the plot. The book begins with neurosurgeon Henry Perowne looking out a window early on a February morning on a world where ignorant armies clash by night, and ends with…
I recently came across the work of Daniel Judah Elazar, a political scientist at Temple University who has devoted much of his working life to tracing the impact of biblical ideas of covenant on the development of Western politics. This comes out most fully in a four-volume work on the…
Holiness is separation, or so we are told. Let’s accept what we’re told. How then is God eternally and unchangeably holy? From what is He separated? If we say “the world,” then prior to the world’s existence God was potentially but not really holy. Of course, this can be resolved…
John Alvis suggests that in Hamlet, Shakespeare alligns himself with Machiavelli at least to the extent that he sees Christianity (or certain forms of Christianity) as a comfort to tyrants. Christians, Machiavelli says, are unresistant to tyranny because they have been taught to wait for the justice of God, to…
Despite the distracting use of the opposition of of “authenticity” and “responsibility,” Terry Eagleton has some thoughtful observations on the tragic dilemma in Hamlet ( Shakespeare and Society , 1967). Hamlet’s is a society of “reciprocal human definitions,” that is to say, a man’s identity is mirrored to him by…
Ephesians 4:15-16: Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the…
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