Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance. Hebrews 10:34 There is an old Puritan dictum that goes, “Sit lightly on the world.” George MacDonald places it…
As Genesis unfolds, God chooses a line of promise out of the nations. One by one its offshoots are peeled away as the story zooms in on God’s chosen people, Israel. First, the line of Cain is peeled away as Cain is sent out from the presence of YHWH. Though…
The following article was an address given to Anselm Presbytery (CREC) in the Fall 2024. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Pray with me. Father of Heavenly Lights and fount of all Wisdom, guide us we pray, by your Word and Spirit,…
At my age, I’ve given up on the fantasy of “keeping up.” Much of my reading is now narrowly focused, research-reading in service of writing projects. If you want bibliography on the ontology of artifacts in Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas (which you don’t), or the purity laws of Leviticus, or…
I have been reading, thinking, and writing about the Internet and its effects upon our identities, communities, polities, and discourses for nearly a copy of decades. In that time, I have encountered no book as perceptive on the subject as Antón Barba-Kay’s A Web of Our Own Making: The Nature…
Identifying the men Paul refers to as “enemies of the cross” in Philippians 3:18 turns out to be relatively difficult. Peter O’Brian speaks of “all kinds of suggestions regarding their identity,” and offers a list of interpretations: “moral libertinists, behavioural materialists, orthodox Jews, lapsed or apostate Christians—because of persecution, Jewish…
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Eusebius of Nicomedia, ally of Arius, denied that we can infer anything about God from what has been created.  On one hand “there is God” while on the other “things created by free will.”  The Word is also a creature of the free will of God.  This free will is…
Love is “as strong as the grave” and ardor “as hard as Sheol.”  Both descriptions are arresting because they attribute a kind of violence to love. “Strong” describes the driving wind of the exodus (Exodus 14:21), the raging waters of the sea that swallowed up Pharaoh (Nehemiah 9:11).  It describes…
“Put me like a seal on your heart, like a seal on your arm,” says the Bride in the Song of Songs (8:6). Seals mark something with the name of the owner.  A letter is sealed as proof of its author (1 Kings 21:8).  The high priest’s golden plate is…
Nature and grace has been a key theological problem at least since the middle ages.  But the distinction is often misplaced.  As used in Athanasius, for example, the terms refer not to two different realms within the creation, or two different sorts of capacities of human nature. Rather, nature and…
Late medieval theologians were divided, we’re told, between intellectualists and voluntarists.  The first took God’s intellect to be “prior” to His will, and believed His will conforms to His reason.  The latter put the will in the place of “priority” and said that God’s intellect is as it is because…
Dionysus said that creation is the overflow of the superabundant love of God.  That’s true: Many waters cannot quench Yahweh’s fiery love.  That love is the flame of the Spirit, the uncreated Flash that flickers over the formless earth and is not put out but instead moves water here and…
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