Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Midwives are rarely mentioned in Scripture, but play a prominent role in the first chapter of Exodus. The word midwife is used seven times in verses 15-22, though it is used only twice elsewhere in the Old Testament. The reason, I think, is not merely that the midwives were heroic…
Leviathan (41:1-11) is the climax of the theophany, the culmination of the Lord’s speech. His final answer to Job’s injudicious charges against God’s justice. After hearing God rehearse the characteristics of Leviathan and His absolute power over him, Job instantly repents in dust and ashes. He confesses, "I know now…
Our purpose in this study is to lay out the chronology and history of the Kingdom of Judah from the reign of King Josiah to the completion of the exile of the Jews under Nebuchadnezzar, with particular attention to the events recorded in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The Empire of Assyria…
Protestants have always insisted that the sacraments bring no benefit without a response of faith, but this seems to undermine infant baptism, since infants do not appear to be able to exercise faith. Luther and Calvin held together their insistence on faith with infant baptism by claiming that infants can…
Traditional Presbyterian theologians regularly cite 1 Corinthians 11:28 as an argument against the practice of paedocommunion. Children must be able “to examine themselves” before they come to the table. Supposedly this text demands a certain level of intellectual capability as well as the capacity to engage in self-conscious introspection, both…
Yahweh’s two speeches at the end of the book of Job (38-41) should bring some closure to the book. The prologue has the whole cosmic order arrayed against the blameless and upright Job, "a man who feared God and shunned evil" (1:1, 8; 2:3). Yahweh’s capstone speeches affirm God’s absolute…
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Study of the sacramental in early modern English poetry has become a cottage industry in literary scholarship. Kimberley Johnson isn't satisfied with the direction this scholarship has taken, and in her Made Flesh , she offers a corrective. Much of the scholarship has focused on sacramental, especially Eucharistic, doctrine as…
What is sacrifice for? Many ancient cultures thought that animal offers fed the gods. The situation is more ambiguous for ancient Greeks. As Charles Stocking points out in his Politics of Sacrifice in Early Greek Myth and Poetry , the only explicit evidence for the notion that sacrifice is food…
In a TLS review of several recent books on China , Gavin Jacobson highlights the role of geography and history in the formation of contemporary Chinese politics. Geography first: "China is enclosed within 14,000 miles of land borders and a 9,000-mile sea edge. Twenty countries lie next to it, including…
In an essay in the Economic Journal (117 [2007] 146-73), Robert Sugden and Luigino Bruni describe how "psychology was removed from economics, and how it might be brought back." The development of behavior economics provides a starting point for them to examine the "Pareto turn," the work of Vilfredo Pareto…
In a long and stimulating piece in the New Atlantis , Samuel Matlack explores the role of metaphor in contemporary physics, especially with regard to the challenges of translating the mathematical formulae of theory into popular writing. Have we, he asks, transcended the need for poetry in our explanations of…
In a discussion of a First Things article about Christian colleges by Carl Trueman, Rod Dreher writes : Sometimes I hear Christians saying things along the lines of, 'Bring it on! The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church!' etc. These are the kind of romantics who…
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