Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Thus says the Lord: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more” (Jer 31:15). The Night of the Hunter belongs on every Christian’s Christmas list. My family has even…
One important part of Jesus's birth narrative is the presence of angels. The angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary, announcing that she would bear a son. And then, on the night Jesus was born, a whole host of angels appeared to the shepherds. Angels are mysterious creatures to us.…
I was settled nicely into my chair and listening to the conversation in an undergrad religion seminar, my last required course to graduate. Though a few Christians sat scattered around the room, the course itself was dedicated to poking holes in traditional understandings of the Bible: our readings deconstructed notions…
God’s symbols belong to Him and to His people. They are constantly at work in the world, including the world of film, music, painting, architecture, and other artforms. You cannot escape God’s symbols or the meaning He has woven into the created order. Artists use and borrow God’s symbols, whether…
For centuries, Christians identified Israel in the Old Testament as a single, literal ethnic group, often called “the Jews.” Even supersessionists – those who believed the Church superseded Israel – assumed the clear-cut, technical definition of “Israel” in the Bible is the ethnic group. However, a deeper dive into Genesis,…
Misreading Intent In the opening verses of Matthew 11, the reader is confronted immediately by John the baptizer who has been imprisoned since 4:12. John poses a question to Jesus, inquiring from prison as to whether or not he is Israel’s awaited Messiah or if they should anticipate another: “Are…
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Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is organized around caskets, bonds, and rings. Of these, the ring plot is the most baffling. After Portia (disguised as a lawyer) saves Antonio’s bacon, she demands that Bassanio hand over a ring as a way of showing his gratitude for her/his intervention. Bassanio got the…
A history of gratitude remains to be written. That it would be a worthwhile project, providing an important angle of vision into important developments in Western civilization, can be illustrated by a contrast of Oedipus and King Lear. As Catherine Dunn explains in her 1946 dissertation on ingratitude in Renaissance…
INTRODUCTION What are we up to in Moscow? The simple answer is that we are embarked on an experiment in Christian culture. Ephesians teaches us how we are to do this. THE TEXT “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints who are in…
Dr. Sean M. Quinlan, an Asst. Prof. of History at the University of Idaho, has written an open letter to U of I President Timothy White in which he renews various charges lodged against Douglas Wilson, Steve Wilkins, George Grant, and me a few years back. It makes the insightful…
Much of the following is inspired by David Hart’s Beauty of the Infinite . Deuteronomy 14:23, 26: “And you shall eat in the presence of Yahweh your God at the place where He chooses to establish His name, the tithe of your grain, your new wine, your oil, and the…
To many Christians, Reformed folk seem more than a little uptight about worship. Calvin left Geneva when the city council attempted to force him to adopt liturgical forms from the city of Bern, even though Calvin admitted he had little quarrel with the Bernese liturgy itself. Puritans made themselves odious…
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