Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Optimism is “an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome.” 1 On the other hand, pessimism is “an inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities or to expect the worst possible outcome.” We can see that optimism and…
If we wish to understand the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we must begin with seeing them as a part of the creational order. Trees, along with plants and seed-bearing things, come to life by the word of God as part of…
“I chant slips and irreversible disasters, wiltings, failures, scars, the little disappointments and the large, blue streaks down a world that wishes it was only suncolors.” Paul J. Pastor from Kintsugi Song I recently lost something very valuable. Something I’d had for years and used every day. But, it wasn’t…
In his eponymous book, Jonah follows an exodus pattern. He travels through the waves and east of the city into the wilderness. On a first reading, it looks like another use of this common literary shape in the Old Testament: salvation through the waters of death and the wilderness of…
“Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” The unknowing master of ceremonies didn’t know how right he was. We see this play out in John’s apocalypse. The end is like the beginning,…
Read in isolation, The Test of Adultery (Num 5:11-31) presents the reader with a seemingly bizarre ritual, conjuring up ideas bordering on the Salem Witch Trials. Beyond this, pressing questions linger—such as, “Why is the woman in particular singled out, while no test is provided for the husband of a…
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Destroy this Temple, Mark 13:1-37 THE KING RETURNS Palm Sunday celebrates the king?s coming to His city. On Palm Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem, hailed as a king. -He requisitions a donkey, claiming it as Lord: ?The Lord has need of it.?E -The donkey has been tied and needs to be…
Another interesting review in the TLS , of Jessica Wolfe’s Humanism, Machinery, and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge), an exploration of the literary uses of machinery and machine imagery in Renaissance literature. According to Wolfe, Renaissance writers saw “the profound applicability of mechanical practices and principles to extra-scientific questions.” In political theory,…
Alastair Fowler has an eviserating review of Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World in the February 4 issue of the TLS . He finds that Greenblatt, despite his new historicist interest in the historical embeddedness of literature, is rather sloppy with historical facts and contexts. Like other reviewers of the…
This is the first of what may turn out to be (but also may not turn out to be) a series of outlines or summaries of David Bentley Hart?s Beauty of the Infinite . My goal in this outline (or, these outlines) is not to critique Hart so much as…
More from Marjorie Garber?s book, this time on Julius Caesar . 1) Though the play is often assigned to high school students, Garber says that the play is ?one of Shakespeare?s most subtle and sophisticated,?Eexploring such issues as ?the nature of kingship, the relationship of the public to the private…
And it was many days. Now the word of Yahweh was to ?Eliyyahu in the third year, saying, ?Walk, cause-yourself-to-be-seen to ?Achav And I will give rain on the face of the earth.?E And walked ?Eliyyahu to cause-himself-to-be-seen to ?Achav Now the famine was strong in Shomron. And called ?Achav…
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