Over the past several days I've read Joshua through 2 Samuel. By sheer coincidence (because those are totally real), I've also recently been reading a newly discovered blog―A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry by Bret Devereaux―which largely discusses the intersection of pop culture and history. The combination of havi… Read more…

[A term paper I wrote for my course The Reformation and the Modern World at Davenant Hall. This version does not include citations: for those get the PDF here.] Introduction “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?”1 Since Luther emerged onto the medieval scene as a lightning bolt from heaven, the … Read more…

The Sabbath Command in the Natural Law Tradition Introduction What is the nature of the Sabbath commandment? All of the Ten Commandments have been the subject of considerable controversy almost since the moment they were given to Moses, but the Sabbath has often presented particularly thorny problems. Read more…

A slightly late post from near the end of one of my classes At long last, we arrive at the locus classicus for natural law in Scripture, Romans 1-2. The first inklings of a connection to natural law starts with Paul's use of natural revelation in 1:18-23. Verse 20 in particular affirms that various truths about God are… Read more…

An Analysis of Luke 23:27-31 Caleb Smith Reading the Gospels with Wisdom November 28, 2020 Introduction Around the world over all of time, there may be no historical account that has received quite so much study and attention as that of Jesus of Nazareth's trial and crucifixion. This extraordinary event has come down t… Read more…

Divine authority and nature interplay in subtle ways in Jeremiah 1. One of the first audible notes is a peculiar dynamic God introduces into the economy of redemption: the inversion of the order of nature to magnify God's unique power and master over that order. Jeremiah is a very young man, untrained in speech, and he… Read more…

Jesus has performed numerous miracles. Most recently He has fed another group of thousands, but afterwards His disciples still did not understand Him. Next He healed a blind man, and we enter this scene wondering: if Jesus can cure the beggar's blindness, can He not cure His own disciples'? For a moment, it seems that … Read more…

Jesus leaves home abruptly to go the other side of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus stills the sea, which may foreshadow the stillness He is about to bring to a Gentile demoniac, given the Old Testament association of the Gentile nations and the sea. The event also evokes Old Testament imagery of God’s power over nature, and … Read more…

In 1 Samuel 8, Israel infamously demands that Samuel appoint for them a king. This event involves some weighty issues for the idea of law and authority. On the surface, at least in many popular readings, what happened may seem simple: God was Israel's only king, but they grew jealous of nations having tangible kings, s… Read more…

[Continued notes for my Davenant Hall class, “Reading the Gospels with Wisdom.”] Jesus' return home may have been full of strife up to this point, with dark accusations from the scribes and someone tense relations with His family, but the rest of the visit moves from events to teaching in one of the few extended sectio… Read more…

[Continued notes for my Davenant Hall class, "Reading the Gospels with Wisdom."] Mark 2 opens with Jesus' return to Capernaum. It refers to this as Jesus "at home," which does not introduce a great deal of meaning but nonetheless strikes one accustomed to thinking so much of Jesus' deity as unusuall… Read more…

[For my Natural Law and Scriptural Authority Davenant Hall class, every other week I must write a reflection on a biblical text as it pertains to the themes of the course. This is my first of these, on Genesis 6 & 11.] Genesis 6 makes for a very peculiar case when considering natural law and the natural order more … Read more…

[This is just a copy-paste job from a Twitter thread I wrote the other day.] In John 6, Jesus says, "All the Father gives me will come to me; and him who comes to me I will not cast out," and "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him." These verses take high place in a common ar… Read more…

[For my Davenant Hall class, "Reading the Gospels with Wisdom," I will be analysing a portion of Mark's Gospel each week. I figured I would also post the notes here.] Mark opens his account by declaring the beginning of the Gospel (ευαγγελιου) of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (perhaps, depending on the textual… Read more…

Modern Bible readers (myself included) struggle with understanding the meaning of literary structure. Partially because our minds are controlled by chapter and verse divisions, isolated Sunday school stories, and other impediments, we have a hard time seeing how the narratives in Scripture actually flow and relate to e… Read more…

Not long ago, I was on Twitter and witnessed (participated in, maybe) a debate over the push to see Jesus in every Old Testament text. In the middle of things, a challenge was issued: "Where's Jesus in Judges 9?" This led me to do some analysis on Judges 9 to find out if we can in fact see Jesus in that narra… Read more…