Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
And He cried out with a loud voice, as when a lion roars; and when He had cried out, the seven thunders spoke their voices (Revelation 10:3). In Revelation 10 John sees Jesus come down to him from heaven with a little book in His hand. Jesus cries out with…
The numbers found in Genesis 5 & 11 display characteristics that indicate a complex and meticulous symbolic schematization operating at several levels. Because these numbers are so potent symbolically, unbelieving scholars have universally (as far as I know) treated them as artificial. Believers take them literally, but believers must also…
And the sixth angel poured out his bowl upon the great river, the Euphrates; and its water was dried up, that the way might be prepared for the kings from the east [sunrising]. (Revelation 16:12) The kings from the east in Revelation 16:12 are generally assumed to be enemies of…
During my brief sojourn as a pastor during the 1980s, I had several occasions to be involved in settling disputes between men in the congregation I served. A typical dispute went like this: Two men formed a company to do business. After a few years, the business went sour, and…
The two harvests of Revelation 14:14-20, of grain and of grapes, are most often understood as symbolic of God’s judgment against the wicked, or against Babylon, as amplified in chapters 16 & 17. Some commentators, however, notice that the gospels speak of the grain harvest as a reaping of the…
(Conclusion of Chapter 16 in the previous Biblical Chronology Article) Month 3, 2513 According to Leviticus 23:15-16, Pentecost was to be observed 50 days after the sabbath after Passover, or 49 days after the Feast of First Fruits. I initially based my reflections on the Jewish tradition that the Law…
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A remarkable statement of Calvin’s, from Institutes 4.14.18: speaking of the tree of knowledge and of the rainbow, Calvin says that these are given new being by the word of God that designates them as signs or testimonies. Then this Et antea quidem arbor erat arbor, arcus arcus; ubi inscripta…
In Nussbaum’s treatment, “tragic” and “Aristotelian” conceptions of moral luck and the fragility of the good life are at one. In excluding poets, Plato not only kept certain forms of literature at bay, but was protecting against the tragic potential of life. For Plato, “the best and most valuable things…
Nussbaum’s problematic of moral luck is quite intriguing: A good man is like a tree, she says at the beginning, quoting Pindar. But that means that the good man is dependent for his flourishing on all kinds of things beyond his control ?Erainfall, winds, sun, and so on and on.…
Should theology agree with the sophist critique of nomos ? It would seem so, as Thomas would say: The institutions of society are the product of human construction, and the claim that they are rooted in “nature” is a rhetorical device. It is human all the way down. If it…
Years ago, I read David Landes’s Prometheus Unbound for a class in economic history, and I can still remember the fascination I experienced at his descriptions of the steel industry (though details are sadly forgotten). In his recent Wealth and Poverty of Nations , Landes, among many other things, spends…
There is further evidence concerning the meaning of nomos in Greek culture, coming from Martha Nussbaum’s Fragility of Goodness . In a discussion of Euripides’s Hecuba , Nussbaum points out that Polyxena, Hecuba’s daughter who is offered as a human sacrifice by the Greeks to appease the shade of Achilles,…
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