Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
It seems to be old news, but I was unaware of it until recently. Australian academics argued that mothers should be allowed to terminate the life of a newborn child. [i] Why would they promote such an idea? Because before the child is born it is not always possible to…
This is the second of two essays introducing Pascal’s Wager. Click HERE for Part 1. In “The Pop Star and the Mathematician” I gave an overview of the apologetic approach commonly called Pascal’s Wager. In that Wager, 17 th -century French mathematician Blaise Pascal argued that the choice between Christian…
This is the first of two essays aiming to introduce the reader to Pascal’s Wager. The second will address criticisms of the Wager. In the early 1990s, a perennially popular British pop star was interviewed on British television about his very public evangelical Christian faith. “What if,” the reporter asked…
Matthew 13 is about secrets. In this chapter, Jesus teaches eight parables and tells the disciples that they reveal the secrets of the kingdom (13:11). And much like Samson who both tells riddles and is himself a riddle that the reader must solve, so Jesus not only tells secrets but…
Click HERE for part One. THE TEXT AS TABERNACLE Creation – Initiation – Genesis (1 Samuel 17:1-11) The gathered armies not only remind the reader of Ebal and Gerizim, but also of the very reason that Israel was established (Creation) , set apart from the other nations by the circumcision…
What to do with Job’s Final “Friend,” Elihu Elihu is a strange character, at least in the sense of how and where he appears in the book of Job. Why does he not appear with the other three “friends?” Does his argument differ from any of the first three who…
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In his recent Our American: A Hispanic History of the United States , Felipe Fernández-Armesto attempts to re-orient the history of the US. As the Economist reviewer explains, “The book takes aim at the founding myths of America that run exclusively from east to west. Those myths begin with ocean-crossings…
Scott Mandelbrote reviews Jed Z. Buchwald and Mordechai Feingold’s Newton and the Origin of Civilization in the TLS , a study of Newton’s efforts to reconstruct the history of the ancient world and his use of historical astronomy to buttress his biblical chronology. Mandelbrote summarizes the background of Newton’s project:…
Oliver Ready offers an insightful analysis of Crime and Punishment in the latest TLS . As Ready says, the book’s title creates expectations about its contents: “A ready-made title, Crime and Punishment suggests a ready-made plot. A man will commit a crime. He will be caught. He will be punished.…
A new zombie apocalypse game, DayZ , departs from conventional gaming by introducing permadeath, which is a lot like real death in that it is permanent: Evie Nagy reports , permadeath means “that players have only one life in the game and lose everything if they are killed—as well as…
Rosaenstock-Huessy argues that the feast of All Souls is the source of Western liberty: “Liberty was promised to all souls, liberty, the great promise of Revolution, is first heard in the Occident at All Souls” ( Out of Revolution , 510). The feast accomplishes this by inserting death and the…
Balthasar, writes Gerald O’Hanlon ( The Immutability of God in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar ), thought it necessary to re-examine the tradition regarding immutability and impassibility because both needed to be “understood in the context of the liveliness of inner-trinitarian love” (168). He elaborates, “Within an analogical…
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