Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In a recent article in Biblical Horizons , I argued that the imagery of James 1:21 alludes to baptism, and particularly to baptism as an ordination and incorporation into the holy priesthood. This understanding of baptism as ordination to priesthood is not, I have since discovered, original, but in fact…
He will be a priest on his throne, and the counsel of peace will be between the two of them (Zechariah 6:13b). A prime difficulty in the interpretation of this verse is the antecedent of the pronoun "them." A number of alternatives have been offered. Some suggest that the "two"…
Like certain kinds of music, the unchanging rhythm of Aquinas's Summa gets into your bones. Read a few sections and it begins to run through your head. You start drumming your fingers, humming, swaying gently to the rhythm of Videtur-Sed Contra-Responsio, Videtur-Sed Contra-Responsio, “It seems-On the contrary-I answer.” The only…
The Book of Revelation is a gold mine of liturgical information. The various hymns and exclamations in Revelation have always been used in Christian worship. As I have been studying Revelation this year, it occurred to me that make a complete hymn out of the various hymns in the book.…
In the book of Revelation we find a triad of Strong Angels, and another triad of Other Angels. The purpose of this essay is to explore the Biblical background of these two sets, and thus fill out their meaning. The first triad of angels we encounter in the Bible comes…
In Revelation, the term aggelos means messenger, of course, but with a special emphasis on messenger as covenant administrator. This is immediately obvious from the fact that the angels are constantly acting to enforce the covenant one way or another: sealing people, bringing judgment, calling for repentance, etc. They are…
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Corey Latta borrows the title of his When the Eternal Can Be Met from CS Lewis’s The Great Divorce . The book is a study of the influence of Henri Bergson’s theory of time on the post-conversion writings of Lewis, TS Eliot, and Auden. He notes that none of these…
In his Babel and Bible , Friedrich Delitzsch pointed to the leftovers of “Sumerian-Babylonian culture” in the modern world - the Zodiac as a system of twelve signs, the circle divided into 360 degrees, the hour divided into sixty minutes and the minutes into sixty seconds (66-7). Babylonian influence is…
Curtis White observes in The Science Delusion that scientists regularly appeal, without admitting it, to extra-scientific values. Natural selection, Dawkins says, lifts us “to the dizzy heights of complexity, beauty and apparent design that dazzle us today” (quoted p. 16)). Hawking finds the “miracle” of a fit between logic and…
Rupert Shortt, author of Christianophobia , complains that the media misreports incidents of Christian persecution: “The battle for sexual equality clearly has a long way to run. But this doesn’t mean that any hardship suffered by a woman can be ascribed to misogyny. The logical false move has been especially…
Yahweh won’t rest until Zion’s righteousness and salvation burst out like a flash of lightning. No one will miss it: “Nations will see your righteousness, and all kings your glory” (Isaiah 62:2). Visible glory make sense. “Glory” is by definition visible in the Bible - the fiery glory cloud of…
Jesus promises the overcomers in the church at Philadelphia that He will set them up as pillars of His temple and inscribe them with a triple name - the name of God, the name of new Jerusalem, and Jesus’ own “new name” (Revelation 3:12). New names are common in the…
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