Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Job appears in the Bible as a true story and it is regarded as such in other Scripture: As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the…
Thanksgiving is warfare. Gratitude is a weapon. Wield it well. Give thanks for the preparation. The hustle and bustle, the messy kitchen, the endless cleaning, the extra chairs, and stained tablecloths sing the song of hospitality. God desires that we prepare a place for friends and strangers, feasting and laughing,…
We often hear that, along with Leviticus, Ecclesiastes is the “most peculiar book,” lurking in the Bible’s back alley. 1 But it is high time that we retire this old dirge. God has concealed much gold here, therefore much glory is ours if we are careful to read Solomon’s wisdom…
1 Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you observe the calving of the does? 2 Can you number the months that they fulfill, and do you know the time when they give birth? Job 39 We have and we do, Lord God. Spring is calving season.…
For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a holy day, a Sabbath of complete rest to Yahweh. - Exodus 35:2 The instructions for building the tabernacle end with a Sabbath command and the narrative about building begins with a Sabbath command, before…
High in the list of now forgotten sins is simony. It was not always so: the medieval schoolmen believed simony to be the worst of ecclesiastical crimes and waged a centuries long campaign to purge the Church of this financial and spiritual corruption. As the schoolmen robustly defined it, “simony…
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A few thoughts on the “General Prologue” to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales . 1) The Prologue sets the stage for a multi-layered set of tales. The real-life Chaucer is, of course, the author, but in the Prologue, he introduces a fictional version of himself as narrator: It happened in that season…
In an essay on “Eschatology” in the Blackwell Companion to Political Theology , the late Robert Jenson argues that Christian eschatology is “directly and almost exclusively a discourse about politics.” The coming of the kingdom means that “the eschaton-polity” Israel hoped for, “the universal polity of peace, appeared as a…
The world’s most interesting man, Matthew B. Crawford, offers a brilliant and chilling diagnosis of “How Science Has Been Corrupted” at UnHerd . The hinge of his analysis is the “dissonance between our idealised image of science, on the one hand, and the work ‘science’ is called to do in…
Caryll Houselander begins her Passion of the Infant Christ with a meditation on seeds and sowing. “The countryman is not impatient,” she writes, “when flowers and fruit disappear and winter lingers.” His seed is in the ground, and he is “as conscious of life in winter, when the crust of…
Law, writes Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule ( Common Good Constitutionalism ), is “a reasoned ordering to the common good,” or, in the words of the Roman jurist Ulpian, “the art of goodness and fairness” (1). Public officials “have a duty, and corresponding authority, to promote the common good” (1).…
For centuries, Eucharistic piety has been distorted by ocular metaphors. We long to “see” Jesus at the table, but the bread and wine form a “veil.” Eucharistic desire is the desire to rend the veil of bread to enter into extra-festive spiritual communion. The ocular emphasis of Eucharistic piety pops…
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