Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
What About Catholics? (continued) Usually, such people are not seeking graven images, but rather their idolatry is of a broader character. They are seeking a home on earth. Scott Hahn’s book is called Rome Sweet Home . This is the essential sin, for there is no home on earth. The…
Reading the earliest Christian apologists is like watching a movie in which the hero has the means to demolish his opponents in his grasp but never realizes it. The apologists come across as men not altogether aware of the radical character of the gospel they defend. In response to charges…
Then [Elisha] went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, ne`arim came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, "Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead!" When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in…
Further Numerical Items of Interest Umberto Cassuto points out some other numerical factors in Genesis 5. 1 For one thing, he observes that every number in Genesis 5 is a multiple of 5, sometimes with the addition of 7. We have, in essence, made this point already. He also points…
Prostration God has designed the human body in a marvelous way, and Biblical religion is very physical. We believe in the resurrection of the body, against all pagan ideas of the immortality of the soul. We bury our bodies, not burning them. Human beings in their totality, including our bodies,…
Since Revelation is laid out in serieses of sevens, it is worth investigating to see if there is a series of seven after the seven libation-bowls of chapter 16. I believe there is, and it is the burden of this essay to expose it. The series of sevens, or heptamerous…
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Joshua Appel, pastoral assistant at Trinity Reformed Church, informs me that Aquinas’ argument from motion is not what many (including me) think it is. It is not an argument that God is the first domino in the line; rather, it is an argument that God is the universal magnet, the…
Barth has some excellent things to say about the Filioque (CD 1.1, 477ff): 1) He notes that Greek theologians as late as the 5th century explicitly affirmed the filioque. 2) He argues compellingly that the original form of the creed not only does not exclude the filioque. The procession of…
Calvin intriguingly says that the Spirit is the power of persistence and growth and life in creation: not merely the agent for the formation of things, but for their persistence. Spirit ensures the temporal endurance of the creature. As Barth summarizes, ?Both the existence of things, created for as chaos…
Barth argues that the Third Article of the Creed had to be finished before the church could truly wrestle with the doctrine of grace: ?It is logical that this doctrine [of the Spirit] had to be the last stage in the development of the trinitarian dogma. It had to be…
1 Kings 15-16 are a schoolboy’s nightmare. A king rises, a king reigns, a king sins, a king dies. Then his son rises, his son reigns, his son sins, and his son dies. And so on and on, indistinguishable kings with nearly indistinguishable reigns. Baasha’s dynasty repeats Jeroboam’s. And it’s…
Adherents to some form of the New Perspective on Paul are notorious for saying that the Catholic opponents of the Reformers were significantly different from the Jewish opponents of Paul, and that the issues Paul dealt with were not those of the Protestant Reformation. Reformers, on this view, addressed works…
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