Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I just finished re-reading G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday . I have in the past had the temerity to say that I believe it to be the best novel of the 20th century. Be that as it may, I still maintain that it is at least one…
And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against and a sword will pierce through your own soul also, that thoughts out of many hearts may be…
I was inspired to write this article after reading John Ahern’s The Case for Shorter Hymnals first published on Theopolis Institute’s website on November 16, 2021. Mr. Ahern and I are writing with different audiences and emphases in mind. I am thankful we both share a mutual desire to see…
If you’ve spent any time in the social-media galaxy of Christian cultural commentators, you have almost definitely run across the Latin phrase Imago Dei . It means image of God . Why they usually say it in Latin, I couldn’t tell you. We saw it in the wake of the…
The Gospel of Matthew—indeed, the New Testament—begins with a list of names, and that list of names is introduced by this heading: “The book of the generations of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Why start like this? Why “the son of David” and “the son…
A blade is raised. A child wails. But the brow under the crown is untroubled. Solomon knows that the raising of the sword will reveal the true parent and the identity of the son. But how did he know this? Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac certainly bears some of the…
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Malcolm Moore reports this morning in the London Telegraph on Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit to the tomb of St. Francis, and Gorbachev’s public confession of Christian faith. Moore writes in part: “Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Communist leader of the Soviet Union, has acknowledged his Christian faith for the first time, paying…
John Ciardi writes ( How Does A Poem Mean? ) about poets who delight in hiding away meanings, often etymological, in the words they use: “they do not insist that every reader respond to them; it is enough that such touches delight the writer and are ready to delight the…
With papyrological evidence, there’s some grounds for saying that there’s considerable overlap between the vocabulary and syntax of NT Greek and “street Greek.” Barr, though, thinks the same about Hebrew: “In Israel at any rate much of the biblical language is unspecialized, for the religious structure is roughly coincident with…
James Barr directs most of his critical and rhetorical power at Kittel, but he’s got some criticisms of Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich too. Specifically, BAG “is too content to give semantic indications which presuppose, and are intelligible only in terms of, a more modern intellectual and cultural Weltanschauung than that…
James Barr is a famous enemy of “illegitimate totality transfer,” but he freely acknowledges that there’s a proper kind of totality. Using the word “ekklesia,” he lists some NT statements about the church (the church is body of Christ, bride, first installment of kingdom, etc.), and says that “the ‘meaning…
Drudge has a full transcript of Obama’s speech concerning race, which includes this statement about his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, that impressively combines sharp criticism with affection for Wright and his church: “I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some,…
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