I argued in a post a few months ago that Isaiah 2:5 begins a new paragraph of Isaiah 2, rather than concluding the opening section of that chapter. I still think that’s correct, but it is something of a Janus verse that faces backwards too. “Come” in 2:5, addressed to the . . . . Continue Reading »
Can it be an accident that the word “nation” ( goy ) occurs 73 times in Isaiah? The initial vision of Jerusalem’s restoration includes all nations - goy is used 4x in Isaiah 2:2-4, signalling the global extent of the redemption. And the overall numerology of the word substantiates . . . . Continue Reading »
“Forsake” ( ‘azab ) is one of the key words of Isaiah. It is used 22 times in the prophecy, the number of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Isaiah is an A to Z of forsaking and forsakenness. The word initially appears in charges against Judah, who has forsaken Yahweh (1:4, 28). . . . . Continue Reading »
INTRODUCTION The first sequence of five “burdens” of Isaiah begins with Babylon (chs. 13-14) and ends with Egypt (chs. 19-20). Isaiah is working backward in redemptive history, from Judah’s future conqueror to Israel’s earliest slave master. THE TEXT “The burden . . . . Continue Reading »
Challenged to explain what he means by the notion that the Father “breaths” the Spirit, Jenson writes: “in the Old Testament ruach often appears as the breath of life, and when it is the breath of God’s life it is a creating wind that blows creatures around like leaves in a . . . . Continue Reading »
In a passionate passage, Farrow enumerates the ways that the church is assaulted for evils that it did more than any other institution to correct - for being misogynist when it “has produced a civilization in which women have enjoyed unprecedented freedom” or for slavery when “for . . . . Continue Reading »
“Insofar as Protestantism denies transubstantiation,” writes Douglas Farrow in Ascension Theology , it collapses into idealism and subjectivism, turns eschatology into utopianism, reduces ecclesiology to secular politics. Without transubstantiation, Protestants appear before God . . . . Continue Reading »
CB MacPherson argues in his recently reprinted The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Wynford Project) that Hobbes’s view of natural man did not come from study of primitive behavior but from abstracting from the actions of his civilized contemporaries: . . . . Continue Reading »
In a nicely nuanced statement, Calvin notes that “there are three modes of insition” [entrance, or grafting] and “two modes of excision.” The modes of entrance into the covenant are: “the children of the faithful are ingrafted, to whom the promise belongs according to . . . . Continue Reading »
The Belgic Confession (Article 34) has a simply wonderful statement on baptism: “We believe and confess that Jesus Christ, who is the end of the law, made an end, by the shedding of His blood, of all other shedding of blood which men could or would make as a propitiation or satisfaction for . . . . Continue Reading »
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