Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Why there is more to Jephthah than meets than eye It was not that long ago that I realized the Jephthah-story and the Jesus-story were basically the same story. Sounds crazy, I know. But here is a one-paragraph synopsis of both: The people of God have gone their own way,…
G.K. Chesterton famously said that the Gospels don’t reveal Jesus’ mirth. It’s true we never catch Jesus laughing. But can we believe He never did? I don’t think so. Laughter is human, and Jesus was fully human. Jesus promised that those who mourned would laugh. He mourned; would He not…
Matthew 2 has all the elements of an exodus story. There’s a murderous king, who slaughters Jewish babies. There’s a infant who will be Israel’s future deliverer, saved from the murderous king so He can later return to save His people and lead them to the Promised land. There’s an…
The calendar of Israel was primarily theological, centered on commemorating the salvific acts of God, but also agricultural, celebrating the creation-restoring effects of those salvific acts. The feasts of the first month celebrated the reviving of the world in the Spring, and typified the cutting off of the Savior in…
The chiastic shape corresponds to the shape of human life. This should not surprise us, because we are made in the image of God, and God is manifest in Word and Spirit. If we are living epistles, our lives will look a bit like the literary shape of the books…
Back in January, Venkatesh Rao wrote a fascinating post on the Ribbonfarm blog, discussing different forms of models of narrative. Engaging with Ursula LeGuin’s talk ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’ , Rao explores her contrast between the (male) ‘hero narrative’ and the (female) ‘carrier-bag story’, and suggests a third…
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“The standard of living in Athens in classical times was high - and not just in relation to the period, but by comparison with almost any other society until recently,” writes Peter Acton in his recent Poiesis . Economic growth in Greece between 800 and 300 BCE was between 0.6…
Noah Smith notes a gap in the world of Star Trek: The Next Generation : “No one is doing business.” Food is free. Scarcity is a thing of the past. People work if they want to, but they don't need to work. Could this be our future? Smith thinks so.…
“Public theology” typically describes “theology that addresses common concerns in an open forum, where no particular creed or confession holds pride of place,” writes Kevin Vanhoozer in his recent The Pastor as Public Theologian . The “public”: in view is “society at large,” and so public theology takes the form…
In his Atonement: A Guide for the Perplexed , Adam Johnson calls the doctrine of the Trinity the “foundation” of the doctrine of the atonement. The atonement only makes sense in the light of a richly Trinitarian theology proper. Johnson shows how the Trinity is necessary both to explain the…
The introduction to Noel Carroll's Art in Three Dimensions is as good a summary of the development of the philosophy of art as one is likely to find. Follow Paul Kristellar and others, he notes that Art-with-a-capital-A didn't exist prior to the eighteenth century. Rather, there were various forms of…
Ted Cohen recounts that he began his research on Jokes by “dividing them into the pure ones and the conditional ones. A conditional joke is one that can work only with certain audiences, and typically is meant only for those audiences. The audience must supply something in order either to…
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