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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Biblical writers often use "text painting": the form of the text portrays the topic of the text. The first half of the flood narrative describes the rising waters, steadily raising the ark toward heaven. The second half describes the descending waters. At the center: "Yahweh remembered Noah" (Genesis 8:1). Rise,…
A response to Jordan Ballor’s review of my Creator , which was published at Acton.org on August 12. 1. Ballor says that, to avoid pantheism or panentheism, God’s identity as creator must be “relative, secondary, or conditional.” He rightly says that I argue the opposite: “God is Creator” is the…
Jonathan Edwards didn’t think the world is a machine. At the heart of the mechanistic interpretation of Newtonian physics, he discerned, was the notion that “bodies” are (in Robert Jenson’s words) “the sort of thing that either can or cannot act ‘properly by themselves.’” The mechanistic world picture involved an…
Joshua Jipp argues that Paul's Areopagus address contains both critique and propaganda, critique of Athenian superstition, lust for novelty, and idolatry, and propaganda in favor of Christian faith as a more consistent fulfillment of the aspirations of Hellenistic philosophical theology. Much of the critique, Jipp shows, is drawn from Isaiah's…
Cobbling together some notes for a lecture series, I was reminded of Seamus Heaney's little poem, " Anahorish ." The Gaelic name means “place of clear water,” as the first line indicates, and the etymology suggests a place of purity and innocence. Anahorish was near Heaney’s childhood home in County…
In an article in the Harvard Law Review from the early 1980s, Robert cover explores the relation of legal structure and narrative. His analysis has wide-ranging legal, political, and even theological import. Cover states the thesis early: We live in “normative universes,” social worlds that distinguish between right and wrong,…
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