Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
John 18:1-11 appears on the surface to be a straightforward, if somewhat unusual, narrative of Jesus’ arrest by officers of the chief priests and Pharisees accompanied by an apparently large group of Roman soldiers, all of them led by the betrayer, Judas. But there is much more here than what…
Why is the US embroiled in the Middle East? There are two primary answers: Oil and Israel. Both are fairly intractable problems, the latter in significant part because of the unique convergence of theology and politics that has forged American policy in the region. Dispensationalists insist that we must bless…
There’s a common theme that arises in the study of theologians James B. Jordan and Peter Leithart. It is this: Context matters. Details matter. This is God’s Word. The details are not arbitrary “filler” hiding the kernel of truth in the husk of the text. The husk and the kernel…
Perhaps the most fearful of all possibilities in the world is the possibility of betrayal on the part of someone who is in a “position of trust.” This, unfortunately, is the first block in what ought to be the foundation of every marriage in the world. Every woman has a…
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The way we talk about the world matters. Our doctrine of creation tells us that words do not simply reflect reality. They also shape it and the way we inhabit it. Among the world’s many language groups, the Church is distinct. She is called to name things with Scriptural language,…
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Are the ritual texts of Leviticus “practical” texts designed to guide priests and people in sacrificial and other rituals? If so, argues Leigh Trevaskis in Holiness, Ethics, and Ritual in Leviticus , they don’t do a very good job of it. Too much is left out, and things that are…
In a few places, Leviticus uses the Hebrew word adam to refer to “any person.” Why adam ? Most commentators suggest that it’s to emphasize sexual inclusiveness. Trevaskis ( Holiness, Ethics, and Ritual in Leviticus ) thinks there’s more. He points out that the tabernacle is an architectural garden of…
In his masterful study of ancient Greek Miasma , Robert Parker notes death was intensely defiling: “Extramural burial was the norm in almost all classical Greek cities. It would be shocking to mingle the dwellings of the dead with those of the living, still more with those of the gods”…
A.A. van Ruler argues that “Israel is the great disturbing factor in the paganism of the world’s nations,” and the church follows Israel’s path ( Calvinist Trinitarianism and Theocentric Politics , 152-3). This is partly because Christianity “is wholly and completely oriented to concrete, visible reality,” since it “thinks and…
Brian Mattson of the Center for Cultural Leadership offers a lively, compelling analysis of Darren Aronofsky’s Noah . He shows that the film is consistent and sticks close to its sources. The only problem is that Aronofsky’s sources are Kabbalic and Gnostic. Mattson writes, “The world of Aronofsky’s Noah is…
I state a thesis: Dostoevsky is a polyphonic hedgehog. The subthesis is that Tolstoy is a monologic fox. The second part of that comparison comes from Isaiah Berlin’s The Hedgehog and the Fox . Berlin cites the Greek poet Archilochus’s dictum, “A fox knows many things; a hedgehog knows one…
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