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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In a 1989 article on Paul’s use of Deuteronomy 21 in Galatians 3, Ardel Caneday argues that Paul’s use of pronouns in Galatians is not indiscriminate: “In Gal 3:10-4:7, Paul employs the first person when life under the law is in view and the second person when the gentile Galatians’…
Paul cites Deuteronomy 27:26 in Galatians 3. The passage in Deuteronomy says, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all the things written in the book of the law to do them.” Paul applies this to “those who are of the works of the law” ( hosoi ex ergon…
“In 1849, some ninety thousand young men swarmed to the gold fields (two-thirds of them were American); in 1850, nearly as many more elbowed their way into the scrum, and the throngs kept coming all through the early 1850s. . . . In the four years from 1849 through 1852,…
Ardel Caneday makes an illuminating contribution to Pauline studies in his contribution to The Faith of Jesus Christ . Caneday rightly insists that the contested phrase pistis Christou , “faith of Christ,” cannot be interpreted in isolation. Translators and exegetes who choose to take the phrase as a subjective genitive…
Conspiracy theories abound, on right and left. Some are loony or worse. But in their recent Modern Conspiracy , Emma Jane and Chris Fleming observe that “the act of conspiring . . . is not inherently noxious” (6). After all, “politics, business, and even family units would struggle to function…
Falling Upwards , a history of ballooning by Richard Holmes, deals with an enchanting subject, and Holmes writes the history enchantingly. The story is populated by daredevils. Like Sophie Blanchard, who put on ballooning shows for Napoleon and after Napoleon fell, until her balloon caught fire on July 6, 1819…
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