Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Paul writes to Jews, “You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?” (Romans 2:22b) The English translation “rob temples” makes readers think of pagan temples. There was only one Temple for Israel, so robbing more than one would indicate other temples are in view. And if the Jews wanted to…
Two offerings Humanity’s first vocation involves guarding and serving the trees that emerge from the ground (Genesis 2:15). God provides these trees to humanity for food. A serpent appears and tempts the couple to eat from a special forbidden tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Humanity…
At the outset of the Torah (as Christians understand it), a triune God creates the heavens and earth over the course of a seven-day week. Why? What’s the connection between the three and the seven? Could a triune God have created the world over any period of time he chose?…
How relevant to the modern reader are the flying axe head of Deuteronomy 19:5 and the roof parapet of Deuteronomy 22:8? Indeed, how relevant were they to the daily lives of Israelites thirty-five hundred years ago? Suppose that accidental falls from rooftops were exceedingly uncommon in ancient Israel, or that…
1 For most of my life, the standing of the American church as a source of national social and political order was measured by reports from the front of the so-called “culture wars.” 2 Memory brings to mind battles over feminism and the ERA, so-called gay rights, the breakdown of…
But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel…’ And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the…
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Jason Zengerle has an interesting piece in the TNR on evangelical conversions to Orthodoxy. At the end of the article, he quotes Jordan DeRenzo, who converted to Orthodoxy when her Baptist pastor, Wilbur Ellsworth, converted. She says: “Coming to the Orthodox Church means that I am in communion with that…
For centuries, Christians have posed the dilemma of Christian theology as a problem of faith v. reason. That’s a non-starter, a concession of defeat, for it assumes that there can be such a thing as a faith-free rationality. But there cannot be. What we have is not a conflict of…
We fondly look back at the Council of Nicea as a solution to the problem of Arianism, and see the homoousios as the key to this solution. Things are not nearly so tidy. Robert Letham neatly summarizes the problems associated with the term in his recent book on Orthodoxy: “As…
Henry Chadwick notes, “Some Christians late in the fourth century, especially round Brescia, walked barefoot after the example of Moses at the burning bush or the prophet Isaiah who went barefoot for three years. Successive bishops deplored this, evidently in vain. Much ancient evidence records the axiom that for cultic…
According to a 1964 article in Modern Philology by John Nabholtz, Wordsworth intended his Guide to the Lakes (first published in 1810; fifth edition in 1835) as a corrective to picturesque writers like Gilpin. He intended his book to model how landscape writing should be done, and most critics have…
In a 1993 article in the Review of English Studies , Colin Pedley points out the similarities between the cadences of this passage from “Tintern Abbey” and Paul’s triumphant conclusion to Romans 8: My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make, Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart…
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