Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
We lost Crimea. That is very clear. Putin proved he was not lying when he said he would place women and children ahead of his soldiers to storm Ukrainian military bases. Russian soldiers did exactly that with women (some who volunteered and some who were forced). Russia now occupies all…
Sound is an indicator of life and energy. “Sound signals the present use of power, since sound must be in active production to exist at all.” Things don’t have to be alive to make themselves visible, and “a primitive hunter can see, feel, smell, and taste an elephant when the…
In the most famous section of his best-known novel, Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov brings forward his case against God. He opens with a horrific litany of outrages against children. Turkish soldiers make a baby laugh and then shoot a pistol into his face. A little girl is beaten, thrashed, kicked by…
At the heart of Esther Lightcap Meek's splendid Little Manual for Knowing is a concept she picked up from Michael Polanyi, "subsidiary-focal integration." The concept begins from the insight that all our knowing, all our experience, is double. We focus on something, but we are capable of "indwelling" that focal…
Jesus promises the overcomers of Pergamum "hidden manna" and a "white stone." The hidden manna is often linked with the manna stashed away in the ark of the covenant. The white stone has proved more elusive. Exodus tells us that manna was white (Exodus 16:31) and like bdellium (Numbers 11:7),…
Leviticus 23 begins with a reference to “Yahweh’s appointed times” ( mo’ade-YHWH ). Mo’ed is the common term for the feasts of Israel. A few dimensions to this term. First, it means “appointed time” or “designated time.” It is a time set by Yahweh. Yahweh has claimed certain times as…
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Rereading the chapter on Derrida in Brian Ingraffia’s Postmodern Theory and Biblical Theology (Cambridge, 1995), I realize just how much my understanding of Derrida was formed by reading this book several years ago. Ingraffia highlights (as I have done in a previous post, erroneously thinking I had come up with…
In his book on the “moral vision of the NT,” Richard Hays refers to homosexual acts as an “antisacrament” of rebellion against God, a visible (even ritual?) manifestation of a rejection of the Creator and His created order. This is a very profound way to describe the character of the…
Sermon notes for October 26: The Father’s Gifts to His Children, Luke 11:1-54 INTRODUCTION On His journey toward Jerusalem, Jesus meets the same range of responses that He met in Galilee. He is accused of being in league with the devil (v. 15) and criticized by the Pharisees (vv. 37-41),…
The remarkable Jody Bottum ?Epoet, poetry editor for First Things , and Books and Culture editor for The Weekly Standard ?Ehas made bioethics his bailiwick, having published several essays in The Weekly Standard in the past few years. He writes the lead editorial on the subject in the current issue,…
In her monograph on magic and the demonic in Luke-Acts (entitled The Demise of the Devil ), Susan Garrett offers some illuminating comments on Jesus’ declaration that He watched Satan fall from heaven like lightning (Luke 10:17-20): 1) She argues persuasively that Jesus is speaking prophetically of a future fall…
The same Weekly Standard review mentioned in a previous post gives a brief summary of the editorial introduction to Volume 21 of the Works of Jonathan Edwards , written by Sang Hyun Lee: “Lee claims that Edwards marks a stunning departure from the Western theological tradition by the way he…
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