Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Book of Genesis contains eleven distinct markers readily acknowledged as the toledot formula. 1 Commentator Nahum Sarna counts the ’elleh toledot to be “…one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Book of Genesis”. 2 Among translations, the noun is variously translated as “generations” (ESV, KJV), “records of the generations”…
The answer that immediately comes to mind to the question in the title is Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah. He was conceived during the extension of life that God granted Hezekiah in response to his ardent prayer on his sick bed (2 Kings 20:1-11, 21:1). His reign is summarized in…
Back in 2019, on a whim, I sketched out a setting for a modern fantasy story: a single coffee shop that is simultaneously present in multiple cities throughout the world: “...you know the one. Books by local authors, brochures for a walking tour of the city’s outdoor sculpture, a poetry…
Peter O’Brien’s translation of Colossians 4:2 surprised me: “Persevere in prayer as you watch for the Lord’s return, and be thankful.” 1 What is surprising about that? Well, none of my English translations mentioned “the Lord’s return” — nor does the Greek text! Translated literally, the verse just says: “In…
I Natural Law This is a brief (well, briefer than it could be) first attempt at responding to a very small section of Stephen Wolfe’s recent book The Case for Christian Nationalism . It’s partial, deeply incomplete, and does not at all address the book as a whole; it is…
The scuttlebutt of the last hundred years would tell us that Albert Einstein was a horrible husband, Winston Churchill was a racist, Mother Theresa was a hypocrite, and Caravaggio a murderer. From Benjamin Britten’s boys to Gandhi’s girls, it can be depressing and confusing to hear about people of great…
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Late at night in Lady Olivia’s great house in Illyrium, three friends – Sir Toby, the lady’s uncle, Feste her fool, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek, her hapless suitor – sing drunken songs that resound loudly through the empty halls. Malvolio, Lady Olivia’s stern steward and “something of a Puritan,” rises…
David Harvey ( Ways of the World ) describes our cultural moment in terms of “space-time compression,” and finds an analogy with the speed-up of life that was widely noted at the beginning of the twentieth century: “While historical analogies are always dangerous, I think it no accident that postmodern…
In her collection of essays on money, Slave of Two Masters , Melinda Selmys devotes several pages to the celebration of motherhood and its unique economics. Taking her cue from the curse of Genesis 3, she argues that men have always “lorded” over women by claiming all important human achievements…
The cry has come up from our national journalogians at the NYT and the Daily News : “God isn't fixing this. No more prayers. Let's get some action.” If God - the living God - were to get busy fixing things, they may not like the way He goes about…
As Robert Jenson has argued, the big question of religion is the question of eternity: How is God related to time? For Greco-Roman paganism and for the great religions of the far east, god or the gods are immune to time, alien to time. The whole point of Plato's forms…
Despite the distracting use of the opposition of of “authenticity” and “responsibility,” Terry Eagleton has some thoughtful observations on the tragic dilemma in Hamlet ( Shakespeare and Society , 1967). Hamlet’s is a society of “reciprocal human definitions,” that is to say, a man’s identity is mirrored to him by…
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