Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
WHAT IS THE OT PRECURSOR OF THE NT OFFICE OF PASTOR? HOW DOES THE FORMER ILLUMINATE THE LATTER? The first problem to address is: how do we know that there is an office of pastor in the New Testament? 1 Perhaps the way the question is put may permit me…
[This essay was originally published in December, 1981, in The Biblical Educator , a publication of the Institute for Christian Economics, and again with slight revisions in Contra Mundum 7 (Spring, 1993). It is reprinted here as a supplement to my book Creation in Six Days .] In 1979, Dr.…
Anyone seeking to reverse the meaning of this promise needs to come to grips not only with the phrase "God was with the lad" later on, but also with Hagar’s response in 16:13. She worships Yahweh, putting her trust in Him and obeying Him. In fact, Hagar is at the…
Ishmael is the narrator of Melville’s fantasy-romance Moby Dick. Melville takes up the traditional view of Ishmael as a wayward son of Abraham, driven out solely because of the Divine "caprice" of election, an angry man with his hand raised against all other men. He is a fitting "anti-hero," or…
There were five cities at the center of the Canaanite culture in the circle of the Jordan, a place like the Garden of Eden, like the land of Egypt, before it became the Dead Sea at the destruction of the cities (Genesis 13:10). Genesis 14:2 tells us their names: Sodom,…
Meditations by James B. Jordan Genesis 19, the destruction of Sodom and the rescue of Lot, is part two of a story that begins in Genesis 18. These two chapters happen in one 24-hour period: noon and evening in Mamre, and midnight and daybreak in Sodom. God and two angels…
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More conservative Christians have often charged that ecumenically-minded churches and theologians are indifferent to doctrine, aiming for a LCD theology. Ecumenical theologian James Wagner (in the 1963 collection The Challenge to Reunion ) argues that the precise opposite is true: “there is probably no group within the Christian fellowship throughout…
American church history is largely a story of division, wrote Robert Lee is a contribution to the 1963 collection, The Challenge of Reunion . In the early twentieth century, that began to change as American churches became “astir with a new spirit of unity and cooperation” (138). He lists 14…
In a chapter on “How to Be Theologically Funny,” Stanley Hauerwas ( The Work of Theology ) states his opinion that Barth was “‘naturally' funny,” but immediately adds that this doesn't really capture the deep role that humor plays in Barth: “his humor was also a reflection of the character…
Writing in 1961 ( Is Christ Divided? ), Lesslie Newbigin observed that while it is “common to say that we live in an age of revolutionary change,” it is uncommon “for Christians to welcome this fact.” Newbigin thinks that's a mistake: “we should welcome it—not merely because of the challenge…
John Peckham devotes a long chapter of his The Love of God to the question of divine emotions, the impassibility question. He emphasizes the need to “maintain the Creator/creature distinction, divine transcendence, ontological invulnerability, omnipotence, omniscience and the fact that God is not involuntarily vulnerable. . . . God is…
To listen to Trump, America is in trouble because we haven't been adequately looking after our own interests. To make America great means to put American interests first. Which raises a question: Is putting America first the way we became great in the first place? Might America's greatness instead have…
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