Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In this essay we will think about how the whole Bible is structured as one Word of God. To begin with, there is only one Bible, not two. While we divide the Bible into Old and New Testaments, that division has no more meaning than divisions into chapters and verse,…
How should one badly bruised and inadequate church relate to another? (I am not addressing the blessed possessors of absolutely perfect churches, naturally.) I believe there are three things to bear in mind. First, we must be open to the values in other Christian traditions - even Roman Catholic and…
The third and sixth day have a second creative act. Note the chiastic arrangement of the material in these special acts and the parallelism between them, see the figure below. The author arranges the description of each day as a chiasm. Each line in the chiasm is mated with a…
Now the two of them were naked, the man and his woman, and they did not sense shame (Genesis 2:25) The nakedness of Adam and Eve requires several comments. First of all, against those who think that nakedness is what God intended for humanity as a permanent estate, we have…
I’ve been reflecting on the meaning of integration, and our longing for integration in a fragmented world. I’ve been connecting my own covenant epistemology further with the thought of scientist-philosopher Michael Polanyi, artist Makoto Fujimura, and Classical Christian metaphysician D.C. Schindler. In my last post , and now in this…
Luke 13:31-33 is one of the strangest passages in the Gospel of Luke. It begins with a time note that sounds emphatic “At that very hour.” Then, we are told of Pharisees bringing a message that Herod wants to kill Jesus! In His answer, Jesus speaks of a three day…
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RJ Snell is aware of what he calls the “Protestant Prejudice” against natural law, and, though himself an advocate of natural law, admits that Protestants lodge “reasonable and sensible objections” against theoretical models of natural law ( The Perspective of Love , 12). Snell, though, argues that these Protestant objections…
Oliver Harris begins his TLS review of Theodore Ziolkowski’s Lure of the Arcane by pondering why two million people went out to buy Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol the first week it was out: “If those who rushed to consume this tale of ancient mysteries and secret societies were not buying…
In a National Interest review of Evan Osnos’s Age of Ambition , Dan Bluemnthal writes that “neither money, nor nationalism is satisfying the Chinese urge for the good life.” He quotes Haruki Murakami’s observation that nationalism is like “cheap liquor” whose effects don’t last. Blumenthal suggests that “There is a…
In his contribution to Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions , Noel Robertson argues that “Archaeology and epic poetry both fix on climate change as a fundamental cause of the Mycenaean collapse.” As the climate cooled and became wetter, the population shifted east, adopted warmer types of clothing, abandoned…
Bernard Suits ( The Grasshopper , 24) begins his effort to define the nature of games by distinguishing games and play from work, defined as technical activity that aims to achieve an end in the most efficient way possible. Distinguishing the two is more difficult that it might appear, and…
David leads the ark procession into Jerusalem wearing a linen ephod (1 Samuel 6). He offers sacrifices after every six paces, gets the ark into a tent, and when it’s all done he blesses the people. He functions in this rite as a royal priest, the chief “layman” in Israel.…
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