Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Ten-thousand ‘yeses’ and a single ‘no.’ From bough it dangles, beauty to the eyes, For belly, food, a fruit to make one wise. Too soon, they eat; they know; the leaves they sew, But, oh! the Love who asks, “Where did you go?” Confessions flow from under leaf’s disguise; A…
In his masterful work, De Doctrina Christiana , Augustine of Hippo writes: I would have learned men to know that the authors of our Scriptures use all those forms of expression which grammarians call by the Greek name tropes, and use them more freely and in greater variety than people…
“In accordance with the creation pattern, God sovereignly took hold of Adam and put him to sleep. Then God divided Adam by removing flesh and bone from his side, and restructured humanity into male and female. When Adam awoke, God distributed the woman to him. Adam gazed upon her and…
Greta Gerwig’s new film, Barbie, has been criticized, probably rightly, for having too many ideas and layers to properly bring in any for a landing. Gerwig herself thought the script was so “ wild and anarchic ” that she was surprised WB agreed to make it. Many see it as…
“Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey” (Matt. 3:4). Why is John the Baptizer clothed with camel’s hair? Why does he want to look like a camel? Or at least: what does he expect…
In the second greatest story ever told, The Brothers Karamazov , Fyodor Dostoyevsky tells the story of a family plagued by the lasting legacy of sin’s destructive power and the all-surpassing truth that God is Light and in Him is no darkness. The young protagonist, Alyosha, is a monk committed…
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It's a common complaint that Africans convert to Christianity not for high-minded religious reasons but for self-interested secular reasons. Drawing on the work of C.C. Okorocha on the Igbo, Andrew Walls disputes this way of framing the issue ( The Missionary Movement in Christian History ): “Religion was always in…
According to Charlotte Gordon's NYTBR review, Michael Knox Beran's Murder by Candlelight “asks us to consider our own hearts of darkness, why we’re obsessed with murder stories, why this obsession matters, and what it suggests about us as a culture and a species.” Beran reaches back into the nineteenth century…
The NYT 's obituary for Oliver Sacks mentions that his 2007 Musicophilia was written partly in response to Steven Pinker's claim that music is “auditory cheesecake, an evolutionary accident piggybacking on language.” Sacks “pointed to [music's] ability to reach dementia patients as evidence that music appreciation is hard-wired into the…
In his recent book on Bonhoeffer's Seminary Vision , Paul House notes that Bonhoeffer insists (in Cost of Discipleship ) that we cannot pit Jesus against Paul. One of the key continuities between the two is baptism. Bonhoeffer writes, “Where the Synoptic Gospels speak of Christ calling men and their…
A couple of weeks back, I suggested that part of Trump's appeal lies in the fact that he resists the scapegoating dynamics of contemporary media and politics. He refuses to take blame. That, Girard would have us believe, undoes the whole scapegoat mechanism; by unmasking the system, it energizes those…
The TLS reviewer is supposed to be reviewing Marilynne Robinson's Lila , but along the way gives a lovely description of what makes Robinson's first novel, Housekeeping , an enduring treasure: “Grave without being heavy, Housekeeping remains Robinson's most lyrically beautiful book. The text weaves together gothic tropes, mystic invocations…
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