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Archive for the ‘Anthropology’ Category

Noticing the Jews: A Reformed Perspective, Part 2

Posted in Anthropology, Contemporary Issues, Culture, Divine Providence, Israel; Calling of & Mission to the Jews, Political Theory & Theology, Social Issues, WPE Editor on May 26, 2026| 1 Comment »

In my previous article, we began to revisit the question of the Jews from a Reformed perspective during our present Western “noticing.” What overlap or divergence is there between the woke right and confessional, Reformed Christianity? Having approached matters from the economic or redemptive-historical perspective of Scripture, especially as found in Romans 9 to 11, let’s consider some doctrinal issues relating to Original Sin, the “world” as enemy of the Church, and divine providence.

The Jews & Original Sin

In considering Jewish identity across the ages, we argued that the Jewish people have continued and must continue essentially intact and identifiably so for the fulfillment of the ancient promises to the fathers. Not in terms of temples and tribulations, mind you—but “natural branches,” being torn away by their unbelief, must by true faith be re-grafted in to their “own olive tree” by national repentance and faith in the Messiah and their inclusion within the catholic, Visible Church on purely equal terms with their Gentile counterparts.

But the woke right mood, when mixed with a generic Reformed Christianity, seems to produce at least a functional rejection of Original Sin. Specifically, the universality of Original Sin. Now, in all fairness, our kinist friends are not wide of the mark in pointing out that the Jews are unique sinners, having sinned against unique privileges. The prophets would have agreed with them, one and all! Moses was weary of living because of them. Elijah, their Moses redivivus, was pretty down on them too and was also pushed to the brink. Christ excoriated them as a “crooked and perverse generation.” And Stephen denounced them as incurably obdurate across the generations: “Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.” It is also not hard to find similar witnesses among our Reformed divines. Thomas Boston, a most tender-hearted evangelist, yearning over the fallen Jews, himself did not blush to write in his sermon on Acts 2:40, “Save yourselves from this untoward [insufferably perverse] generation”:

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“This little world called Man”

Posted in Anthropology, Apologetics & Evidences, Natural Theology, Patristics on May 18, 2026| Leave a Comment »

XXII. For if, he says, I leave everything else alone, and consider myself and the whole nature and constitution of man, and how we are mingled, and what is our movement, and how the mortal was compounded with the immortal, and how it is that I flow downwards, and yet am borne upwards, and how the soul is circumscribed; and how it gives life and shares in feelings; and how the mind is at once circumscribed and unlimited, abiding in us and yet travelling over the Universe in swift motion and flow; how it is both received and imparted by word, and passes through air, and enters with all things; how it shares in sense, and enshrouds itself away from sense. And even before these questions — what was our first moulding and composition in the workshop of nature, and what is our last formation and completion? What is the desire for and imparting of nourishment, and who brought us spontaneously to those first springs and sources of life? How is the body nourished by food, and the soul by reason? What is the drawing of nature, and the mutual relation between parents and children, that it should be held together by a spell of love? How is it that species are permanent, and are different in their characteristics, although there are so many that their individual marks cannot be described? How is it that the same animal is both mortal and immortal, the one by decease, the other by coming into being? For one departs, and another takes its place, just like the flow of a river, which is never still, yet ever constant. And you might discuss many more points concerning men’s members and parts, and their mutual adaptation both for use and beauty, and how some are connected and others disjoined, some are more excellent and others less comely, some are united and others divided, some contain and others are contained, according to the law and reason of Nature. Much too might be said about voices and ears. How is it that the voice is carried by the vocal organs, and received by the ears, and both are joined by the smiting and resounding of the medium of the air? Much too of the eyes, which have an indescribable communion with visible objects, and which are moved by the will alone, and that together, and are affected exactly as is the mind. For with equal speed the mind is joined to the objects of thought, the eye to those of sight. Much too concerning the other senses, not objects of the research of reason. And much concerning our rest in sleep, and the figments of dreams, and of memory and remembrance; of calculation, and anger, and desire; and in a word, all by which this little world called Man is swayed.

Gregory Nazianzus, Theological Orations 2.22

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Worth your time

Posted in Anthropology, Family & Family Issues, Family Religion, Housing: Problems & Strategies, Israel; Calling of & Mission to the Jews, Secularization, Social Issues, The Social Status of the Church, Worth Your Time on April 12, 2026| Leave a Comment »

“The Fundamentalist Christian and Anti-Semitism,” by Francis Schaeffer (1943)

“The State of Christianity in Europe With special guest, Magnus Persson,” White Horse Inn

Third and last: family living with family—or really close. Matt Walsh says what I’ve felt for years:

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Noticing the Jews: A Reformed Perspective, Part 1

Posted in Anthropology, Christian Ethics, Culture, Israel; Calling of & Mission to the Jews, Postwar Consensus, Nationalism, Social Issues, WPE Editor on March 30, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Many of us these days are noticing a lot of “noticing.” That is, more and more people—especially young men—are increasingly aware of the Jewish other. Podcast personalities and influencers have noticed the Jews and subjected them and the state of Israel to exponentially more criticism in the last few years than I’ve witnessed my whole life. And grand conspiracy theories about them, once the domain of fringe thinkers, seem to be going mainstream. Stock Jewish tropes are traded around and Jew banter abounds. It’s definitely in vogue, and a sign that you’re in the know and not a Boomer. And all this has found a place in Reformed circles.

Just how much the Jew-jokes and memes are serious can be hard to tell. We might write it off as boys being boys, blowing off steam, mimicking and one-upping their peers. I’m inclined to think at least some of it is benign; though I’ve seen a good amount of nasty stuff. And how much of the political commentary is more performative bluster or even profitable clickbait is also not obvious to me. There has always been demand for the provocative, and this kosher slab of red meat seems to be in high demand these days.

And yet, whether or not this is more of a fad, still I am rather concerned. I am noticing some things about this “noticing,” if you will, this new attitude to the Jews from the right that is unhealthy and far from God-honoring, though finding traction in our circles. Permit me to offer some perspective on this new trend, from a confessionally Presbyterian point of view.

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Warfield’s “On the Emotional Life of our Lord”

Posted in Anthropology, Audio Resources, Christ Jesus, Christian Conduct, Christian Ethics, Christian Life & Experience, Conscience & Casuistry, Experimental Religion & the Cure of Souls, Mental Health on January 12, 2026| Leave a Comment »

B. B. Warfield’s “On the Emotional Life of our Lord” is simply a masterpiece of exegesis, theology, and psychology on the high mystery of the God-man’s emotions as the Gospels depict them. Especially profound are his insights on His holy anger and fear, where the “holy, harmless, undefiled” Savior gives full play to this side of His sanctified humanity without the slightest breach of God’s law. “Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow!” And so we may appreciate all the more deeply the sympathy of our High Priest who can be “touched with the feeling of our infirmities, yet without sin.” This is an absolute must-read—I know of nothing else like it on the subject. You can read it below or listen to my recording here. Let me also suggest my recording of Richard Baxter’s “On the Government of the Passions;” and visit full WPE Audio library for more titles.

Warfield, On the Emotional Life of our LordDownload

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Demonic Nephilim, hold the hybrid?

Posted in Anthropology, Biblical Interpretation, Gender & Sexuality, Spiritual Warfare; the Occult, WPE Editor on October 28, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Who were the Nephilim of Genesis 6? I have long defaulted to the traditional Protestant interpretation, that they were the product of the lawless blending of the Sethite line with the heathen. Given the analogy of faith, Matthew 22:30 appears to close that door for us rather firmly. The angels “neither marry nor are given in marriage.” And the thought of a mongrel tertium quid between humans and demons just opens a theological Pandora’s box in my mind.

Yet, I am open at least to a variant option. Meredith Kline advanced a unique interpretation of Genesis 6 and the “sons of God.” In the article appended below, Kline argues that these “sons of God” who married the “daughters of men” were princes of the earth (following Psalm 82), and/or heroic, quasi-legendary figures. Maybe even degenerate Sethites drunk on power and glory? In any case, if Kline is on to something, what if these “sons of God” made a Faustian bargain with demonic powers in order to advance their intellectual and physical prowess for even greater domination and glory? Then genetic alteration happens (or a kind of reversal of post-fall physical decline?) along the lines of the Gadarene demoniac, etc. Then these demonically ‘souped-up’ heroes procreate with reckless abandon. And thus you get the Nephilim-giants with demonic sexual influence—something that has been increasingly entertained within evangelicalism in more recent years, such as with Michael Heiser—yet without recourse to the problematic man-demon hybrid theory. 

And as always, standard caveats! I am hardly a “Klinian.”

Click to access Divine-Kingship-and-Genesis-6_1-4.pdf

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Kuyper on the sacredness of sleep

Posted in Anthropology, Biblical Theology, Common Grace, Natural Theology, tagged , , , , on January 22, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The following comes from the pen of Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), pastor, theologian, and prime minister of the Netherlands. It’s a devotional work entitled To Be Near Unto God. And you don’t have to be a card-carrying Neo-Calvinist to appreciate it!

“NIGHT is a mystery in our life, and remains a mystery. For years together, sleep to most people is a provisional going out from life, in order after some seven or eight hours to come back to it. When they fall asleep, which most people do immediately after their head touches the pillow, they are gone, and when the hand on the dial of the clock has moved on a given number of hours, they rise and resume their part in life. At most they have an occasional remembrance of a dream that entered into their sleep, but for the rest it is all a blank. The seven hours during which they were lost in unconsciousness passed by unobserved, and as far as their remembrance of them goes they amounted to no more than two or at most three hours.

“Thus a third of life is taken out of their existence. When they are thirty years of age, they have actually lived but twenty, and the other ten years are wrapped in the haziness of sleep.

“This sleep, however, was not devoid of purpose. He who was weary on retiring, rises girded with new strength, though as far as his consciousness goes, he was idle. His thinking, feeling, willing, working, have all been at a stand-still. This absolute surcease of life is the normal state of things, for as long as man is well, in the fullness of his strength and not oppressed by cares, he sleeps as long as nothing disturbs him from without.

“Why this was so ordained, remains a riddle. For though it is true that after hours of work our strength becomes exhausted and demands rest to recuperate, this does not solve the problem. For at once the question arises: “Why this exhaustion of strength?” God, our Maker, after Whose Image weare created fainteth not, neither is He weary. The heavenly hosts of angels do not sleep. Of the New Jerusalem we read: “And there shall be no night there” (Rev. 22: 5). Thus, a being who does not continually exhaust his strength, and hence is in no need of sleep, is conceivable. Why God, our Maker, appointed a life for us with continual exhaustion of its power to be restored by sleep, remains a mystery. This ordinance of the Lord has not been promulgated without a purpose and a wise design, though no one understands it.”

Read the rest of the chapter here.

[Image source.]

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