Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
After Elijah’s battered and depressed howling in the wilderness it must have seemed like the new prophet came eating and drinking. Which is a pattern we see again in the New Testament—John is explicitly identified with Elijah (Luke 1.17, Matthew 11.14), howling the truth in the wilderness that the people…
Reading Robert Conquest’s biography of Stalin 1 has opened new lines of meditation on Paul’s command in Colossians 3:9. But before turning to that, let me briefly indicate what Paul is not saying. He is not saying that there is no such thing as righteous deception, such as Jael practiced…
You won’t find wild lions today in Israel. But lions used to range much more widely than they do now, and in biblical times they were a menace that shepherds in Israel had to contend with. David did as a shepherd boy, and Amos—who “ was among the sheepbreeders of…
I would like to remedy a flaw for English speakers in the book of Genesis. A flaw that may seem innocuous, but we must remember where the devil lives...in the details. If we are to fear the Lord, it behooves our translation committees to ensure that the fearfulness of God…
While reading at my son’s baseball game this week, a mom from our school approached me and asked if I was reading Dante. I wasn’t, but our sons are both reading Divine Comedy in their sophomore literature class, so it was a reasonable question. What unfolded was a quick conversation…
In the first two essays in this series, I addressed the question of how the nations would learn about Israel’s Torah, in the second essay especially emphasizing the aesthetic aspects of Israel’s testimony. For we naturally wonder: How would people in Mesopotamia or Egypt, not to mention the rest of…
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I have found Bryan Spinks book on the sacramental theology of Stuart theologians disappointing. So far, there’s little besides some fairly superficial summaries of the work of individual theologians. Some of these open up interesting angles, but Spinks makes no effort to relate shifts in sacramental theology to larger cultural…
Letter from a Graduate Student Following is a transcription of a letter found in the archives of a recently deceased Professor of Philosophy at a major American university. The original was written in a childish scrawl, and was almost illegible. For reasons that may be obvious, the provenance of the…
I read a good bit of Buchan while in Cambridge, and here is a short analysis of one of his best historical novels, Midwinter . Midwinter is an historical novel set in England during the mid-eighteenth century effort of the Jacobite supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie to place their leader…
I’ve been wanting for some years to write an article developing the fairly simple point that all texts depend on things that are not in the text for their meaning. Jokes are among the best examples of this. What makes a joke funny is usually something that is not stated…
Some impressive quotations from Muller’s Christ and the Decree (p. 36): This is Calvin ( Inst 2.12.1): In discerning Christ’s merit, we do not consider the beginning of merit to be in him, but we go back to God’s ordinance as the first cause. For God solely of his own…
Perichoresis has been used historically to describe God’s relationship to the world, as a way of expressing the immanence and transcendence of God. It is true, on the one hand, that God is contained by nothing, and is instead the One in whom we live and move and have our…
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