Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
After 9 chapters of genealogy, the Chronicler begins his history with the death of Saul and the rise of David. The latter part of 1 Chronicles 12 describes the assembly of warriors from the twelve tribes to Hebron to celebrate David’s coronation as king. They have a three-day feast, with…
In the introduction we saw that Matthew and Luke are the only gospels which include “fire” in John the Baptist's narrative. If Matthew and Luke are the priestly and prophetic gospels, the inclusion of fire is of great importance. Priests are servants of the altar, working with fire every day.…
The feet of the great statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream cannot be interpreted as a prediction of the states of modern Europe, but the lessons from their failure can certainly be applied . The statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream spoke of God’s ordaining of four empires which would rule in succession throughout…
This past Sunday afternoon, I drove just a few miles west of my neighborhood to visit the corner of Sherman Blvd. and Burleigh St. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Amid a crowd I stood, looking at a huge gas station and multiple vehicles, all completely destroyed. Hundreds of feet of yellow caution…
1 Chronicles 12 is a flashback. The Chronicler has told the story of Saul’s death at the battle of Mount Gilboa. He has described how “all Israel” gathered to David at Hebron to make him king over all Israel (11:1-3). At the beginning of chapter 12, we move back to…
A great story draws you into specific details while delivering an ending that keeps you coming back. It brings you into the minutiae of life in such a way that requires patience, only to deliver a breath of fresh air time and again. The climax of the biblical story comes…
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In an 1873 article in the Mercersburg Review, E.V. Gerhart, a professor at Mercersburg seminary, argued that nineteenth-century views of baptism had departed radically from the viewpoint of the Protestant confessions: “Claiming to be the faithful representative of Reformational ideas, the religious press of our day, generally at least, denies,…
E.V. Gerhart argues in his 1873 Mercersburg Review article that the Heidelberg Catechism teaches that “Baptism makes the sinner a new man.” He explains: “The word ‘renewed’ in this connection . . . is to be taken as affirming a new organic relation of the subject of Baptism with Christ,…
At the beginning of her The Philosophical Question of Christ , Caitlin Smith Gilson sketches the multiple dilemmas of historicism. Historicism “takes the historicist out of history,” which is not only paradoxical but, on historicist terms, impossible, since outside history “there is no place to be” (xiii). How does this…
Frank Kermode summarizes Alain Robbe-Grillet’s experimental novel, In the Labyrinth , in his The Sense of an Ending : “the soldier who is the central figure only slowly emerges (in so far as he does emerge) from other things, the objects described with equal objectivity, such as the mysterious packet…
In a contribution to Women and Water: Menstruation in Jewish Life and Law , Leslie Cook helpfully traces the differentiations of Leviticus back to the divisions of creation. In the creation accounts, God is differentiated from human beings and human beings from nature by “body, blood, food, time, and space”…
To be accounted clean, land animals have to “chew the cud.” The Hebrew for “chew” is alah , to bring up or to ascend. That’s quite literal. Animals that chew the cud swallow, and then regurgitate the food back to the mouth to chew. By the time we get to…
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