Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If 1 Chronicles were a movie, it would begin with two hours and forty-five minutes of credits: Name after name scrolling across the screen, most of them (as far as we’re concerned) obscurities and nonentities and unknowns, forgotten fathers and sons and mighty men; all the bit players in the…
Let me locate myself. I’m sitting on a sand dune, three hundred feet above the blue-as-a-swimmer-crab water of Lake Michigan. I’m so high above the surface that the sound of the waves flopping onto the beach is as quiet as wind easing through a screen door. Around me are several…
My title is too grand. What I offer here falls far short of a full description of poetry. I barely offer a definition. A more accurate title would be “Axioms and Suspicions About Poetry.” Axioms first. I have three of them. The first is the closest I can come to…
In his book In Defense of Food Michael Pollan does just what the title suggests, he defends food. Pollan argues that the presupposition behind modern food science, or “nutritionism” as he calls it, is that humans don’t need food, they need nutrients. To be sure, modern science is not yet…
The early church took possession of the Roman Empire within a few centuries, largely because she ministered sacrificially in word and deed. The church provided services and care that the empire and pagan religions could not in times of crisis. The faithful witness of those serving Christians bore great fruit…
My title, “The Original Murder” will be understood by many readers, if not almost all, to refer to Cain’s murder of Abel, but I have in mind the very first murder, the one which Jesus pointed to when He said that Satan was a murderer “from the beginning.” “You are…
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A 1974 JBL article by Karl Donfried explores some of the allegorical elements of the parable of the virgins in Matthew 25. He points out that the “door” is an important motif for Matthew: “This is an important theme for Matthew. On the eschatological day, Jesus will stand at the…
“When her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.” That’s Genesis 25:24, and it’s talking about Rebekah pregnant with Jacob and Esau. “It came about at the time she was giving birth, that behold, there were twins in her womb.” That’s Genesis 38:27, and…
A man had three sons who went out into the wide world to see their fortune. Everyone thought the first two sons were smart and would be successful, but the last son was an oaf, and everyone knew he would return an utter failure . . . . We know…
Matthew doesn’t talk about wisdom and foolishness very often, and only twice does he contrast the wise ( phronimos ) to the foolish ( moros ). The first comes at the end of the sermon on the mount, where Jesus contrasts wise and foolish builders; the other comes in the…
Baylor’s Alexander Pruss offers this nifty Aristotelian critique of Humean natural law: “The most basic dichotomy between views of laws of nature is that between Humean views on which the laws of nature are merely descriptions of the actual states of affairs that obtain, and anti-Humean views according to which…
“Persona est rationalis naturae individua substantia,” said Boethius in his treatise on the two natures. This has been viewed as a radically deficient definition of personhood, but Peter Simpson argues that it’s got more going for it than many imagine. In response to the charge that it relegates what really…
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