I really liked this passage from Kevin J. Vanhoozer’s article, “Letter to an Aspiring Theologian: How To Speak of God Truly,” in the August/September 2018 issue of First Things: … [T]he best way to stay focused on the subject matter of theology is to stay focused on Scripture. John Calvin viewed his Institutes as help … [Read more…]
In one of our church’s weekly “small group” meetings, we recently discussed Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, John 4:1-42. It occurred to me that this might be the first non-Jewish convert. My NIV study Bible has a table that puts all four Gospels in single chronological order, and that seems to … [Read more…]
As I noted elsewhere, these are the two post-Moses/pre-monarchical history books, and so it makes some sense to consider them together. What’s more, I think that together they address an important question, namely how Israel would and should deal with the non-Israelites in the Promised Land, and considering them together helps illuminate that matter. Joshua … [Read more…]
Overview I suspect that there are many who, like me, find daunting the twelve books that stretch from Joshua to Esther, between the Pentateuch and the Wisdom books. And no wonder: They cover more or less sequentially a thousand years of Jewish history, from about 1400 B.C. to about 400 B.C. So perhaps an overview of … [Read more…]
Overview David’s reign as king of Israel is recounted in II Samuel and I Chronicles chapters 10-19 (there is a fair amount of duplication between the two books). David’s life before he becomes king is found in I Samuel chapters 16-31, where it is very much intertwined with Saul’s. And David continues to have a … [Read more…]
In this post I’ll be writing about I Chronicles chapters 1-10 and I Samuel. But, despite the title to this post, these texts do not correspond exactly to Saul’s biography, for a couple of reasons. First, once David is introduced in I Samuel chapter 16, his story and Saul’s are intertwined until Saul’s death in … [Read more…]
This book is short (132 pages plus notes); the author says that it is drawn from a longer, earlier work by him, Money, Possessions, and Eternity. It is also straightforward and unabashed in its message: While faith is what gets us into Heaven, it’s works that determine how and to what extent we will be … [Read more…]
I got this book after reading a glowing recommendation for it by Eric Metaxas, who has written a foreword for it in a new edition just published (I wasn’t able to get that version on interlibrary loan, alas). Metaxas compares the book to C.S. Lewis’s work, and author Thomas Howard himself most graciously includes Lewis … [Read more…]
Solomon’s reign is recounted in I Kings chapters1-11 and II Chronicles chapters 1-9 (tradition holds that the author of the latter was Ezra, by the way). The accounts overlap substantially but not completely, and where they describe the same events they do so in ways that are consistent but not identical — even, disconcertingly, in … [Read more…]
At the beginning of the reign of Rehoboam, Solomon’s son and successor, the northern tribes (that is, all but Judah itself and the small tribe of Benjamin) rebelled (I Kings 12:24) because of the new king’s highhandedness, and from then through the Babylonian exile there was never again a united kingdom. The account of this … [Read more…]