Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the Bible, fatness is such a blessing, that it is especially hard to understand why wicked men are permitted to enjoy such a state. It requires a theodicy and faith in God. Thus: “For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek . They are…
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The allusion to the Exodus story is contained in the first words of Deuteronomy 14:1 — “ye are the sons of Yahweh your God” — as well as in 14:2 in the use of the technical term translated “treasured possession,” “His own possession,” “peculiar people,” “precious people,” and so forth.…
I have argued that Deuteronomy 14:1-21 is an independent literary unit that applies the Third Word to the lives of Israelites from the time of Moses and Joshua. In this short pericope, Moses suggests broad and deep meaning by means of literary allusion to the stories of the creation and…
In his recently republished The New Creation , the late, delightful Herbert McCabe defends the priesthood of the plebs as roundly as anyone could want. Citing Hebrews, he claims that "there is an essential difference between the Christian community and the community of the Old Law, or any other religious…
Augustine famously prayed, “Our hearts our restless until they rest in You.” True indeed. Being creatures, we inherently sense our ontological poverty—our innate condition of dependence—and are compelled to find a sense of security. And it is also true—as Augustine’s own narrative painfully illustrates—that one of the things we most…
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Every time it surges, Islam surges explosively. When it gets going, it makes the globe wobble. Robert Wilken ( The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity ) writes that nothing during the first millennium of Christianity rivaled the rise of Islam; it was as an “unexpected, calamitous, and…
Before he converted, Boris, khan of the Bulgars, peppered Pope Nicholas with questions about how conversion would affect Bulgar life. Among other things, Boris asked about the custom by which the Bulgar king ate by himself on his throne while everyone else, including the royal family, ate at a distance.…
The Abraham narrative of Genesis begins with a promise of land and descendants like the sand and stars. It ends with a down payment on the promise. Abraham sojourns in the land, but after Sarah dies he negotiates the purchase of a burial site (Genesis 23). It is the only…
“The Federal Reserve is not your friend,” writes Judy Shelton in The Weekly Standard . Its policies encourage “unjustified risks in pursuit of monetary gain,” give incentives for “speculative conniving instead of virtuous endeavor,” offers reasons to borrow beyond our means to repay. Friends don’t do that to friends. The…
In his The Law and The Elementa of The World An Exegetical Study In Aspects of Pauls Teaching (1964), AJ Bandstra helpfully describes the Greek term stoicheion / stoicheia as a “formal” term. By that he means that it has “by itself no specific content” but “receives its ‘specific content’…
In the midst of a sharp political critique of the American South of today, Garry Wills has some sharp observations on the contribution of the South, especially its literature, to America: “A sense of the past helps explain why America’s southern writers were to the rest of America, in the…
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