Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the first installment of this essay, I offered the following chiastic outline of 1 Timothy: A. 1:1-2. Paul greets Timothy as a true child of the Faith, and blesses with grace, mercy, and peace. B. 1:3-7. Timothy is urged to command against heresy. C. 1:8-11. The reason the Law…
In the first installment of this essay, I offered the following chiastic outline of 1 Timothy: A. 1:1-2. Paul greets Timothy as a true child of the Faith, and blesses with grace, mercy, and peace. B. 1:3-7. Timothy is urged to command against heresy. C. 1:8-11. The reason the Law…
In the Bible, a memorial is something that brings God's promises and previous actions to mind, so that He can do them again. The rainbow is the model, set in heaven so that Yahweh remembers the covenant He makes with Noah (Genesis 9:13-15). God is light and dwells in a…
The First Epistle to Timothy fits neatly in the context of what King Jesus and the church are doing in the gospels, in Acts, Revelation, and all of the Apostolic Age in between. Paul writes to Timothy to encourage him in his work as a pastor in the “latter days,”…
I have been pastoring Cornerstone Reformed Church in Carbondale, Illinois since 1999. We are members of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), but have been practicing catholicity for many years, both personally and corporately. I’ve always believed that the Church of Jesus Christ is much more than the local…
Ecumenism is easy to talk about. It’s doing something to promote it that’s the problem. As a pastor in a town with churches of different denominations, all of whom love their doctrinal distinctions and are jealous to defend them whenever they perceive the slightest challenge, how can you be ecumenical…
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The American university purports to be an institution dedicated to dispassionate inquiry and the pursuit of wisdom. Since the 1960s, many Americans have identified universities with anti-American radicalism, sexual libertinism, and moral relativism. That is certainly part of the crisis of American higher education. Less publicly, though, scientific and technical…
From the early centuries through the Reformation and beyond, Christian thinkers distinguished between violence and just acts of force. Justin argued that every “honourable person” would agree that “rulers should give their decision as having followed not violence and tyranny but piety and philosophy” ( First Apology , 2). Tertullian…
In Milbank’s view, Augustine violates his own privative doctrine of evil, which gives no “ontological purchase to dominium , or power for its own sake,” when he allows that punishment might take a purely positive form. For Milbank, “in any coercion, however mild and benignly motivated, there is still present…
While eschewing Marcionism, Eric Siebert attempts to distinguish between the textual and the actual God and argues that “ some Old Testament portrayals of God do not accurately reflect God’s character” ( Disturbing Divine Behavior: Troubling Old Testament Images of God ). But his overt selectivity leads him to split…
In a 2004 article in Word & World , Terence Fretheim claims that several texts of the Old Testament attribute violence (Heb. hamas ) to God. Only one is a convincing example. In Job 19:7, Job cries out against the “violence” done to him. He has just complied that Yahweh…
Christina Rosetti wrote a number of books dealing with biblical and spiritual themes. In one, Letter and Spirit , she suggests that it is “a genuine though not a glaring breach of the Second commandment, when instead of learning the lesson plainly set down for us in Holy Writ, we…
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