Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
"Vanity of vanities", says the Preacher. "All is vanity". Life, we are told in the book of Ecclesiastes, is a repetitious, wearisome cycle; all that is and all that will be has already been. There is nothing new under the sun. What is crooked cannot be made straight, what is…
The Bible tells us that when God created the earth, He set up three zones of life. The first was the world itself. The second was the holy land of Eden. And the third was the Garden in Eden, God’s sanctuary. God told Adam and Eve that every tree was…
In our survey of Biblical chronology we have arrived at the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, which provide chronological information for the period after the return from exile, the Restoration Period of Old Testament history. The question we begin to address in this essay is whether the Artaxerxes of these…
These verses from the Sermon on the Mount are generally taken in connection with Jesus’ earlier statement concerning adultery in the heart (vv. 27-28); the eye and the hand have obvious relevance to the sin of adultery. At the same time, most commentators admit that the principle of avoiding occasions…
17. The eye that mocks a father, And despises to obey a mother, The ravens of the valley will pick it out, And the young eagles will eat it. 18. There are three things that are too wonderful for me, Four that I do not understand: 19. The way of…
The modern Church in America and virtually everywhere else is ideology-centered, not geographical. This is because various Churches believe different things and have different customs of worship and sacraments. The ideological Church has gradually developed from the time of the Reformation, because accuracy of doctrine has become more important to…
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When Israel’s light shines, kings will flock to Zion to “serve” ( sharat ) Israel. The word typically describes priestly ministry. In the Pentateuch “stand to serve” is a thumbnail description of priestly ministry (Numbers 16:9; Deuteronomy 10:8; 17:12; 18:5, 7), and sharat also describes priestly ministry in the post-exilic…
Irene Backus began her study of Reformation Readings of the Apocalypse: Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenberg out of frustration that Protestant commentaries on Revelation were widely unavailable. Her book is a straightforward summation of the ways Calvinists and Lutherans read the book. Those in Calvin’s circle were, she concludes, “conservative” in…
When Jesus called the disciples to be “fishers of men,” he was riffing on imagery from the prophets. Yahweh fishes for Israel as He gathers exiled Jews from the sea of nations in His nets. Isaiah 60:5 gives an additional angle on the imagery. In the parallel lines at the…
Yahweh bares His arm so that the nations can see the “salvation of our God” (Isaiah 52:10; Heb. yeshu’at-elohenu ). The genitive seems obviously to refer to the salvation that God brings. After all, what sense would it make to speak of God Himself being saved? But then Isaiah twice…
Zizek ( The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? ) consider’s John Caputo’s On Religion to be the “ultimate formulation of Derridean deconstructive messianism” (256). Caputo reveals that deconstruction is a “Jewish science” at war with idols and even, Caputo says, with incarnations “because incarnations are always local occurrences” (quoted…
“Who are these who fly like a cloud, and like the doves to their windows?” someone asks in Isaiah 60:8. It’s a puzzling question in a context having to do with the assembling of Gentiles at Zion for worship (vv. 6-7, note gold, frankincense, flocks and rams that ascend on…
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