Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Optimism is “an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome.” 1 On the other hand, pessimism is “an inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities or to expect the worst possible outcome.” We can see that optimism and…
If we wish to understand the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we must begin with seeing them as a part of the creational order. Trees, along with plants and seed-bearing things, come to life by the word of God as part of…
“I chant slips and irreversible disasters, wiltings, failures, scars, the little disappointments and the large, blue streaks down a world that wishes it was only suncolors.” Paul J. Pastor from Kintsugi Song I recently lost something very valuable. Something I’d had for years and used every day. But, it wasn’t…
In his eponymous book, Jonah follows an exodus pattern. He travels through the waves and east of the city into the wilderness. On a first reading, it looks like another use of this common literary shape in the Old Testament: salvation through the waters of death and the wilderness of…
“Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” The unknowing master of ceremonies didn’t know how right he was. We see this play out in John’s apocalypse. The end is like the beginning,…
Read in isolation, The Test of Adultery (Num 5:11-31) presents the reader with a seemingly bizarre ritual, conjuring up ideas bordering on the Salem Witch Trials. Beyond this, pressing questions linger—such as, “Why is the woman in particular singled out, while no test is provided for the husband of a…
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Vico was not opposed to logic, but thought that its centrality in modern educational systems was damaging: “it throws into utter confusion, in our adolescents, those powers of the youthful mind each of which should be regulated by a systematic study of specific subject matters; as, for instance, memory by…
Donald Verene writes that Vico’s opposition to Descartes and Cartesian thought rests on a “different conception of man.” For Vico, humans are “an integrality (not sheer rationality, not mere intellect, but also fantasy, passion, emotion),” and Verene also remarks on Vico’s “insistence on the historical and social dimension” of human…
In his Schmalkald Articles (1538), Luther begins with a brief statement about justification through Christ by faith. Later in the articles he returns to the issue of the gospel, and intriguingly introduces the sacraments as one of the “helps” that God provides against sin: “We now want to return to…
Hamann address his first dedication to his Socratic Memorabilia “To the Public, or, Nobody, the Well-Known.” The dedication begins with a concatenation of biblical polemics against idols: “You bear a name and need no proof of your existence, you find faith and do no miracles to earn it, you get…
Hamann’s style was as critical to his protest against Kant and the Encyclopedists as the content of his opaque essays. As Kenneth Haynes points out in the introduction to the recent Cambridge volume of Hamann’s writings, “The style he cultivated was the opposite of that of the Encyclopedie , obscure…
Hamann’s style was as critical to his protest against Kant and the Encyclopedists as the content of his opaque essays. As Kenneth Haynes points out in the introduction to the recent Cambridge volume of Hamann’s writings, “The style he cultivated was the opposite of that of the Encyclopedie , obscure…
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