If you’re anything like me, you wonder if the West will survive. You also know that orthodox Christians and Orthodox Jews have very much in common, and are perhaps the best ones to work on reviving the best of civilization. In December in New York City Jewish and Christian thinkers will talk about how this can be done.  This will be a small by-invitation-only conference, and most expenses will be paid for participants. Get info and application here: http://herzlinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/custom/mailings/2016-05-17/?v=5&utm_source=InforuMail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Jewish-Christian+Alliance+Conference    ... Read more

It doesn’t seem fair. Leviticus 21 rules that “no one who has a blemish shall draw near” in the Holy Place at the Temple “to offer the bread [of the Presence] of his God” (17).  No one “blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or limb too long . . . or hunchback or a dwarf or a man with a defect in his sight or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles” (18-21). Could this... Read more

Last week when I was perusing the “Summer Books” issue of the Christian Century, I was alarmed to read that Walter Brueggeman’s Chosen? is one of the bestsellers at Westminster John Knox Press. Bruggeman is a distinguished Old Testament scholar.  Two decades ago he wrote a book on Israel (The Land) that was responsible and helpful to many scholars like me.  But something has changed for Brueggeman in the years since. This new book is worse than bad, as I explain in the following review... Read more

Donald Bloesch was a theologian who was also a saint.  He was a clarion voice for Reformed evangelical orthodoxy in the second half of the twentieth century.  This is the foreword to Bloesch’s last book (The Paradox of Holiness), soon to appear from Hendrickson Publishers. (more…) Read more

I travel a lot, and am apt to complain about the hassles of flying, airports, security lines, cancelled flights that require an extra night’s stay, often at my expense. Please remind me, dear reader, of traveling in the 16th century when you hear me complain the next time. Here is a travelogue written by Francis Xavier, the 16th-century Catholic missionary. (more…) Read more

Sixty-eight years ago today, the modern state of Israel was born.  The tiny nation, surrounded by enemies on all sides, declared her independence. But some today claim this was an act of theft.  They say Jews stole land from the Palestinians, the rightful owners. When critics accuse Israel of theft, they often say there was no attempt in 1948 to create two states, one for Jews and one for Arabs. Is that true? Was there no attempt to create two states then? (more…) Read more

One reason why many Christians and secularists dismiss Christian (and Jewish!) Zionism is that they think it is one example of many nationalisms that arose in the nineteenth century, when Romanticism and European democratic movements were inspiring many peoples of common culture to form nation-states.  The implication is that Zionism is therefore recent and political, and cannot be essentially related to ancient times and religion, as religious Zionists claim it is. The first problem with this charge is that there is... Read more

Irrevocable: The Promise and Challenge of Israel in the 21st Century Tuesday, June 28    6:00-8:30 PM Wednesday, June 29     9:00 AM – 8:30 PM Hope Church, 7132 Portland Ave. S, Richfield, MN For more info, write JoAnn Magnuson at [email protected] (more…) Read more

Where is God when his people suffer oppression? Why does he seem hidden as ISIS and Boko Haram murder Christians? Does God ever approve of war? God and Politics in Esther, a new book by Jewish political philosopher Yoram Hazony, addresses questions no less urgent today than in biblical times. Hazony, president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem, might be called the Jewish version of Reinhold Niebuhr or Richard John Neuhaus, two 20th-century thinkers who wrote extensively about how Christians... Read more

This is the last of our series on the constitution of the Old Testament–the Shema (Deut 6.4-9). The last verse is v. 9, where we are told to write the words of God in our houses where we see them entering and exiting, and in the places where we conduct business and enact or write laws for our community. Ukh’tav’tam al m’zuzot beitekha uvish’arekha. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (more…) Read more