Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
G.K. Chesterton assumes a surprising and memorable perspective from which to view the events of Palm Sunday (Matthew 21:1-11) The Donkey by: G.K. Chesterton When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born. With monstrous head…
There is a common biblical principle: you must give back what you steal. In the Bible, restitution is repayment with interest. If you rob someone of their money, you have to pay back double what you stole. A thief must pay back fourfold if he steals a sheep, and if…
Identifying Isaiah’s suffering servant with the promised Messiah is unthinkable for a Jew because it combines the offices of humble priest and victorious king. While it is frustrating that Jews refuse to see the sufferings of Christ in Isaiah 53, the reluctance of Christians to interpret the passage in its…
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Psalm 150:6 (ESV) The command to praise God is pervasive throughout Scripture. In the verse above the Spirit calls all things with breath to praise the Lord. Song is also clearly featured all throughout Scripture and is a featured…
“Gender is a social construct.” That’s shocking to people who have assumed that gender and sex were synonyms but at least since I was in college, in the ‘80s, we were taught that “gender” refers to the forms, the customs, the traditions that our culture teaches us to define what…
In Genesis 49, Jacob prophesies about (blesses and curses?) his twelve sons. The first three of them don’t fare well. Jacob recalls Reuben’s offense of taking his concubine (Genesis 35:22) and the murderous violence of Simeon’s and Levi against the Canaanite inhabitants of the city of Shechem (Genesis 34). He…
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In their The Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature , Richard Emmerson and Ronald Herzman find apocalypse in unexpected places. Like Chaucer. For the medieval mind, any pilgrimage evoked the pilgrimage of the soul toward heaven, and The Canterbury Tales is no different: “For the individual pilgrims, the pilgrimage suggests the…
Someone recently referred me to Delbert L. Wiens’s Stephen’s Sermon and the Structure of Luke-Acts . It looks wonderful. He has a triple thesis: First, that Stephen’s speech is “a politike in the broadest sense, a sociological and political account of the levels and developmental stages of the Kingdom of…
In his wonderful Jesus and the Victory of God , NT Wright compiles all the passages where Jesus warns of an impending catastrophe, within “this generation.” It’s a long list. Someone needs to do the same with the rest of the New Testament. (Andrew Perriman’s The Future of the People…
Matthew doesn’t tell the parable of the Prodigal Son, but he might has well have. He records the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, which has the same structure and point. Some laborers work through the heat of the day, some come at the 11th hour and work only…
Jeremiah tells the exiles that they will be conquered by Yahweh’s “servant” Nebuchadnezzar and will be under Babylon for 70 years (Jeremiah 25:8-11). When the time’s up, Yahweh will punish Babylon and recompense them for their deeds (vv. 12-14). In preparation for this eventual judgment, Yahweh hands a cup to…
Nicolai Gogol’s mystical, exotic religious views didn’t quite fit any form of orthodox Christianity. Orthodoxy deeply marked him, especially Orthodoxy monasticism. After his first visit to the monastery at Optina, Gogol wrote that he “took a memory away with me that will never fade. Clearly, grace dwells in that place.…
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