Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If 1 Chronicles were a movie, it would begin with two hours and forty-five minutes of credits: Name after name scrolling across the screen, most of them (as far as we’re concerned) obscurities and nonentities and unknowns, forgotten fathers and sons and mighty men; all the bit players in the…
Let me locate myself. I’m sitting on a sand dune, three hundred feet above the blue-as-a-swimmer-crab water of Lake Michigan. I’m so high above the surface that the sound of the waves flopping onto the beach is as quiet as wind easing through a screen door. Around me are several…
My title is too grand. What I offer here falls far short of a full description of poetry. I barely offer a definition. A more accurate title would be “Axioms and Suspicions About Poetry.” Axioms first. I have three of them. The first is the closest I can come to…
In his book In Defense of Food Michael Pollan does just what the title suggests, he defends food. Pollan argues that the presupposition behind modern food science, or “nutritionism” as he calls it, is that humans don’t need food, they need nutrients. To be sure, modern science is not yet…
The early church took possession of the Roman Empire within a few centuries, largely because she ministered sacrificially in word and deed. The church provided services and care that the empire and pagan religions could not in times of crisis. The faithful witness of those serving Christians bore great fruit…
My title, “The Original Murder” will be understood by many readers, if not almost all, to refer to Cain’s murder of Abel, but I have in mind the very first murder, the one which Jesus pointed to when He said that Satan was a murderer “from the beginning.” “You are…
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As early as Xenophon, ingratitude has seen as a cause of sedition, and during the middle ages the social and political context of feudalism strengthened this link. Xenophon wrote, “And they [the Persians] bring one another to trial also charged with an offense for which people hate one another most…
In a brief 2002 essay on “Creator and Creature,” reprinted in Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics , Robert Jenson admits that “we indeed need to move conceptually outside the biblical narrative as such,” but he argues that common ways of conceptualizing the Creator-creature distinction are self-contradictory, incoherent, or depart from the…
Is China poised to rule the world? Will its growing economic and political clout fundamentally transform the way the world whirls? Ho-fung Hung ( China Boom ) doesn't think so. On the contrary, China “has both helped to perpetuate the existing U.S.-centered global neoliberal order and reshaped the balance of…
The contributors to Rousseau and the Dilemmas of Modernity share a skepticism of accounts of “Rousseau the totalitarian” and “Rousseau the illiberal menace.” Positively, they share a conviction that Rousseau has great relevance to present day dilemmas. As editor Mark Hulliung says, “When it comes to whether we can attain…
Isaiah 19-20:6 is an oracle against Egypt. It's not good news for Egypt. Egypt will come under a savage king. The following verses evoke the plagues and the passage through the sea: waters dried up (v. 5), canals emit a stench as they did when the fish died in the…
Nikolaus Pevsner ( The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design ) quotes Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, writing in 1841: “There should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction, or propriety . . . The smallest detail should . . . serve a purpose, and…
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