Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety. (1 Timothy 2:15) Years ago, the wife of a prominent American theologian recognized that even in Christian circles mothers were under a kind of social pressure to justify the worthwhileness of their…
I caught my five year old washing his hands again. He had already washed them several times that hour, so I asked him if he was okay. He told me he didn’t want to get “the virus”. That was before I had told him anything about coronavirus, but we did…
Very early in life, I developed the habit of walking and thinking and meditating. I came from a rather strict home, and the only way I could get out of the house at night was to walk the dog. So, I did. I would walk the dog for miles and…
From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us. The Fourth Deprecation from Thomas Cranmer's 1544 Litany 1 A deprecation, such as that above, is a prayer to be spared from disaster, its Latin root deprecari meaning to…
In the previous essay in this series, we saw that Jesus’ words about coming on the clouds were spoken on more than one occasion, first to the disciples on the Mount of Olives (Matthew 24:30; Mark 11:36; Luke 21:27), then, a few days later, to the high priest and Jewish…
The following is excerpted from an essay first published at Church Life Journal . We are grateful to the editors for permission to repost here. The word “science” at its root means “to know” and the word “theology” at its root means “to think about God.” Can we know anything…
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What do we do when we disagree about what the Scriptures say? Augustine's answer to that question has rarely been put into practice. This from The Literal Meaning of Genesis : “And when we read in the divine books such a vast array of true meanings, which can be extracted…
Jon Baskin's piece on David Foster Wallace is the best thing I've come across on Wallace. He starts with the arresting claim that in time “it will be recognized that Wallace had less in common with Eggers and Franzen than he did with Dostoevsky and Joyce.” His fiction is a…
H ezekiah “completes” a Passover (2 Chronicles 31:1a), then starts breaking things. He continues until the destruction is also “complete” (2 Chronicles 31:1b; Heb. kalah ). He breaks pillars, cuts down Asherim, and pulls down high places and altars. Hezekiah's purge is described in a single complex verse, 2 Chronicles…
A “Kantian chapter on emotion and responsibility,” write John Sabini and Maury Silver ( Emotion, Character, and Responsibility ), ...is easy to write and quick to read: the domain of the moral is the domain of the will expressed in action; it is the domain of that for which we…
S ince at least Max Weber, historians and sociologists have assumed that the Reformation contributed to what Weber called the “disenchantment” of the world. The thesis has inspired rich historical, sociological, and philosophical studies, from Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic to Charles Taylor's A Secular Age .…
T he Chronicler's account of Hezekiah's Passover (2 Chronicles 30:1–12) is arranged in a neat chiasm: A. Hezekiah sent letters of invitation to Israel to join in Passover, vv. 1–4 B. Couriers take decree throughout the land, vv. 5–6a C. Content of the invitation/decree, vv. 6b–9 B'. Couriers pass through…
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