Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Job appears in the Bible as a true story and it is regarded as such in other Scripture: As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the…
Thanksgiving is warfare. Gratitude is a weapon. Wield it well. Give thanks for the preparation. The hustle and bustle, the messy kitchen, the endless cleaning, the extra chairs, and stained tablecloths sing the song of hospitality. God desires that we prepare a place for friends and strangers, feasting and laughing,…
We often hear that, along with Leviticus, Ecclesiastes is the “most peculiar book,” lurking in the Bible’s back alley. 1 But it is high time that we retire this old dirge. God has concealed much gold here, therefore much glory is ours if we are careful to read Solomon’s wisdom…
1 Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you observe the calving of the does? 2 Can you number the months that they fulfill, and do you know the time when they give birth? Job 39 We have and we do, Lord God. Spring is calving season.…
For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a holy day, a Sabbath of complete rest to Yahweh. - Exodus 35:2 The instructions for building the tabernacle end with a Sabbath command and the narrative about building begins with a Sabbath command, before…
High in the list of now forgotten sins is simony. It was not always so: the medieval schoolmen believed simony to be the worst of ecclesiastical crimes and waged a centuries long campaign to purge the Church of this financial and spiritual corruption. As the schoolmen robustly defined it, “simony…
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Margaret Garber points out that Arden, the name of the forest in As You Like It , is also the maiden name of Shakespeare’s mother, “so it is arguable that some nostalgia for childhood would double the geographical place with a psychological, or at least a remembered, place of ideal…
Rusty Reno’s discussion of nature and grace ( The Ordinary Transformed ) is not so satisfying as Jenson’s. Reno says that theology’s challenge is to explain the real relationship between nature and grace without detaching them or conflating them. Too intimate a relationship “implies a partnership between the ordinary and…
In the second volume of his systematic theology, Robert Jenson summarizes and critiques de Lubac’s theology of nature and grace. He agrees with de Lubac’s conclusion that the supernatural is not owed to nature because “the reverse in the case.” Quoting de lubac: “Nature . . . owes itself to…
Ward quotes Rosalind’s line, “Say a day, without the ever,” and asks, “Did Shakespeare know he had used all five vowels, and with such symmetrical elegance that the first two, appearing three times each, neatly surround the remaining three in correct order within: a-a-a-i-o-u-e-e-e?” He suspects not, but then observes…
AL Rowse counted some 25 references to the Cain and Abel story in Shakespeare’s plays. As You Like It has two - Duke Senior and Frederick, Oliver and Orlando. And there’s Hamlet Sr and Claudius, Edgar and Edmund, Prospero and his usurping brother. Not to mention all the brother-like rivalries…
In his introduction to As You Like It , John Powell Ward free associates on the Forest of Arden, to good effect: “Arden, garden, Garden of Eden (and Adam), ardent, Mary Arden, Arden in Warwickshire, the Ardennes in France - there are many leads into what is suggested. Despite the…
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