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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Jesus holds seven stars (Revelation 1:16). Farrer says there can be no doubt what these stars are: They are the seven planets of the ancient solar system, which lent their names to the days of the week ( Revelation of St. John Divine , 68). He elaborate: “Christ embraces [the…
John hears a voice and turns to see it (Revelation 1:10, 12). C.E. Douglas ( The Last Word in Prophecy , 149-51) observes that this picks up on a rich vein of biblical phonology. Ezekiel heard a voice above the firmament, and what he saw was a human figure glowing…
We live in a world of novelty. Newness has never been more new, and, like the mercies of God, the new is new every morning. But a strange thing has happened on the way to a world of the never-new now. Along the way we’ve made the past more accessible…
Fans exert more influence on popular culture than ever before, or so it seems. Katherine Larsen and Lynn Zubernis, authors of Fangasm , aren’t buying it. Drawing on their work Devon Maloney observes that “creating a relationship in which producers give fans what they think they want—has become a massive,…
Christopher Elwood ( The Body Broken , 75) claims that Calvin’s “instrumental” view of sacramental efficacy opens up a space for critical scrutiny: “Rather than being regarded as either sacred or secular, political and social orders, by analogy with the sacramental elements, were likely seen by the attentive reader of…
I sketch some of the contours of sanctuary theology at the Trinity House site.
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