Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on…
A hundred years ago, William Warley signed a contract to buy a house in Louisville, Kentucky from Charles Buchanan, a white man. Before closing the sale, Warley, who was black, learned that the lot was subject to a city ordinance barring blacks from occupying the premises if most of the…
I concluded the first essay on this topic by saying that I would introduce three books about Shakespeare and the Bible, but I decided to introduce four instead. The three books become four are: Naseeb Shaheen, Biblical References in Shakespeare’s Plays (London: Associated University Presses, 1999) ; Hannibal Hamlin, The…
My children attend a classical Christian school, situated in the independent “free church” evangelical tradition. Over the past few years they have been growing in their acquaintance with the world of Homer, Plato, Virgil, and Livy. They enjoy it, and I envy it. The school is a great school. My…
The Prodigal Son parable (Luke 15) has been a favorite of liberal theologians for a couple of centuries. It seems to be a parable designed for liberal sensibilities: An indulgent, accepting Father; forgiveness extended without a cross; a surly older brother who might represent the "conservative" face of religion who…
“I want now to tell you, gentlemen, whether you care to hear it or not, why I could not even become an insect. I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to…
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Revelation is divided into four large sections, marked by the phrase “in the Spirit.” (I picked this up from an ETS presentation by E. Michael Rusten.) Jesus is in the Spirit on the island of Patmos (1:9-10); a trumpet voice calls him to heaven and he ascends in the Spirit…
In the final chapter of his magisterial The Mind of Egypt , Jan Assmann sketches out the path by which Egypt left its mark on the modern world. Interest in Egypt surged in the Renaissance, as “newly discovered manuscripts were hailed as the rediscovery of Egyptian wisdom” (427), but it…
Jan Assmann ( The Mind of Egypt ) summarizes the account of the exodus provided by late antique Egyptian writers - Manetho, Apion, and Pompeius Trogus, a first-century BC historian. The last of these conflates the exodus with an old Egyptian story of the expulsion of the lepers: “Moses is…
Assessing the impact of Hellenism on Egyptian culture, Jan Assmann ( The Mind of Egypt ) argues that “The Hellenistic project was not a bid to hellenize the east but to find forms of expression in which indigenous traditions could be made transparent and translatable. Hellenism provided local traditions with…
Robert Kaplan argues in Asia’s Cauldron that control of the South China Sea is going to be critical in the geopolitics of this century. According to Ian Morris’s NYTBR review, “Kaplan starts out from some basic economics. More than half of the world’s annual merchant fleet tonnage (including four-fifths of…
David Owen’s fascinating New Yorker piece on airline seating included these tidbits. “seat-back video screens and the hard frames that surround them pose a safety challenge, partly because of the potential for injuries caused by head strikes, and partly because the computers and the electrical systems that serve them have…
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