I recently went to an Intervarsity meeting where we read the first half of Luke 18—the parable of the widow, and the prayers of the Pharisee and the tax collector. While everyone else read Luke, I was searching for the Old Testament parallel: what is Luke intending to echo in this story? The...

Over the last three weeks I’ve been looking at the book of Esther. In post #1 I addressed the book’s canonicity. In post #2 I looked at evidence of impiety (compromise). And last week in post #3 I noted the lack of covenantal imagery. My essential argument has been that...

Last week I wrote briefly about whether Esther belongs in the canon of Christian scripture.  I concluded that it did, but my focus in this post is on how it fits.  Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the Book of Esther is the lack of any reference to God.  This is further accentuated by...

Withstanding the apostles and Jesus himself, Saint Aurelius Augustine is arguably the greatest Christian theologian of the first millennium.  His contributions to the understanding and development of Bible interpretation are incalculable.  He was a man ahead of his time.  Indeed many of the...

Over the past couple weeks I have attempted to lay a framework for the one-kingdom v. two-kingdom debate. I have done this by providing a brief sketch of crucial post reformation thinkers on the issue such as Abraham Kuyper and the later neo-Calvinists. Here we saw that while Kuyper was...

…A manger was His Throne. From “Rise and Shine” by Andrew Peterson The aforementioned lyric from Andrew Peterson serves as a great illustration of the paradox that is “God with us.” Stop and think about that for a minute: God with us. Not God for us, or God near us; God with us! If...

Earlier this year I submitted the following entry for The Lexham Bible Dictionary.  This will be the entry for “Philosophy”.  It’s obviously too late to change it for the dictionary, but let me know what you think anyways! (I like it alright, but the quote from Kierkegaard...

“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” This quote, uttered by Benjamin Franklin, is closer to the mark than most Christians may realize. Growing up in a fairly conservative evangelical tradition (albeit in Las Vegas!), I was basically raised to believe that...