Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
It is a well-known movie trope, the sports car drives up, a stiletto-heeled starlet steps out and the camera follows her leg up the prodigious slit of her dress, then it takes in the rest of her figure before settling on her face, usually primed and puckered for some pro-feminist…
The “personalist” understanding of the Trinity, articulated most influentially in the work of John Zizioulas, has fallen on hard times. Recent scholars have attacked Zizioulas’s idea that Cappadocian Trinitarianism represented an ontological revolution, hammering again and again the distinction between divine and human personhood. Michel Barnes’s conclusion is the most…
I sit here in my office and poke around on a keyboard that is not even physically connected to my laptop and characters appear on a screen. I have a phone in my pocket through which I talk to someone around the world, send a text message, and to which…
I want to give a pep talk. Nothing fancy, nothing clever. Jesus makes some astounding promises in Luke 11. I want to clear out the clutter and convince you to believe Him and to act on it. The chapter begins with Jesus praying and teaching His disciples to pray by…
Eleonore Stump in her book Wandering in Darkness invites us to re-read the story of Lazarus (John 11) from Mary’s perspective. Stump argues that the story of Lazarus is a story of Mary, since both Lazarus and Martha are identified by their relationship with Mary. The true ending of the…
In his introduction to The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift in Honor of James B. Jordan , Peter Leithart says this about him: “Jordan is an unclassifiable thinker because he is an unclassifiable person . . . he closes his eyes in ecstasy listening to Messiaen or Rachmaninoff . .…
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Revelation 21:1 concludes the last section of chapter 20, but also inaugurates a new section of the text. It's a Janus passage, looking both back and forward. 21:1-8 concludes the large section begun in 17:1-2, the fourth “in Spirit” vision of the book. The section is divided into smaller bits…
A city descends from heaven (Revelation 21:9ff). It's laid out as a cube, like the Most Holy Place. It's measured, like other holy environments in the Bible. It is adorned with jewels - precious stones like the stones of the temple or on the high priest's breastpiece. It's a golden…
Will Herberg ( Protestant Catholic Jew ) summarizes the American response to the growth of the Irish Catholic population of the US. Tension simmered throughout the middle antebellum decades of the nineteenth century, as nearly 2 million Irish, mostly Catholic, immigrated: “The Irish, precisely because in language, manners, and culture,…
At the end of his story of Texas Christianity ( Rough Country ), Robert Wuthnow assesses the strengths and weaknesses of two major theoretical perspectives on modern religion - secularization theory and rational choice theory. Secularization theory misses a lot: “It underplays the continuing importance of agriculture and the rural…
The sequence of events in Revelation 20 has some puzzles. Jesus has defeated the beast and the false prophet and thrown them into the lake of fire (19:1-21). The devil is well in hand, chained in the abyss that is shut and locked. He can't deceive the nations anymore, which…
After the dragon is bound in the abyss, John next sees thrones (Revelation 20:4). His description of the thrones and those who sit on them is arranged chiastically: A. Thrones - they sat on them B. Judgment was given to them C. Souls of the beheaded C'. Those who did…
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