Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Christmas is a joyful season, but for many it turns into something else. Instead of joy, it is full of disappointment and unhappiness. Instead of an occasion for family fellowship, it becomes an opportunity for opening old wounds, reigniting old arguments, giving new life to rancor that should have died…
The Temple of Time The “covenant-literary matrix” of the Bible is not a pattern imposed upon the text, but the internal logic of its arrangement. This fundamental structure, functioning at multiple levels simultaneously, is a ceaseless reiteration of God’s primary theme. It is an algorithm forged in the furnace of…
In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Exodus, Solomon began to build the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. [1] That the author of Kings should date the start of the building of the temple from the Exodus is noteworthy. In Exodus 15:17, in Moses’ song following the…
Philip Schaff, a German Reformed theologian, states in The Principle of Protestantism that the material principle of Protestantism is “the doctrine of the justification of the sinner before God by the merit of Christ alone through faith.” This is the core message of the Church which leads “to the abandonment…
“Religion” is an attempt to create or build a tower with a top, or to build a temple that is self-contained. The story of The Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 is the story of mankind’s attempt to create a world that is self-contained and does not need God. All…
In the first essay in this series, I presented a case for dating Matthew before AD 70, contrary to the present scholarly consensus. In this essay, I intend to present cultural, personal, ecclesiological, and theological arguments for a very early date for Matthew. [1] The cultural argument concerns literacy in…
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Malcolm Gladwell’s lengthy essay on the Branch Davidians normalizes and humanizes a group that even to American Christians was a strange, unnerving cult. Gladwell presents a damning indictment of the FBI response to the extreme Adventist community that was destroyed near Waco in 1993. Gladwell argues persuasively that the government…
Trevaskis ( Holiness, Ethics, and Ritual in Leviticus ) proposes a chiastic outline of Leviticus 21-22: Priestly defects (Lev. 21.16-24) A. [4 defects] blind, lame, disfigured, an ‘overgrown limb’ ( ???? ) (v. 18) B. [2 defects] impaired leg, impaired hand (v. 19) C. [6 defects] hunchback, withered member, a…
Van Ruler is an advocate of “theocracy,” but he at the same time insists that toleration is “an absolute necessity in the state” ( Calvinist Trinitarianism and Theocentric Politics , 186). It is necessary because every people is religiously mixed, because intolerance invariably leads to coercion, because of the reach…
Bad question, says Justin Barrett ( Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology , 26): “No aspect of our biological development, let along our cognitive development occurs without important contributions from both our biological endowment and our environment. Cells don’t divide and multiply without a steady stream of chemical nourishment from their…
I review Leigh Trevaskis’s Holiness, Ethics, and Ritual in Leviticus at the Trinity House site. Click here .
Donald Rayfield reviews two recent essay collections on cultural relations between England and Russia in the TLS : Anthony Cross, A People Passing Rude : British Responses to Russian Culture and Russia in Britain, 1880-1940 , edited by Rebecca Beasley and Philip Ross Bullock. The links are broader and deeper…
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