Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Optimism is “an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome.” 1 On the other hand, pessimism is “an inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities or to expect the worst possible outcome.” We can see that optimism and…
If we wish to understand the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we must begin with seeing them as a part of the creational order. Trees, along with plants and seed-bearing things, come to life by the word of God as part of…
“I chant slips and irreversible disasters, wiltings, failures, scars, the little disappointments and the large, blue streaks down a world that wishes it was only suncolors.” Paul J. Pastor from Kintsugi Song I recently lost something very valuable. Something I’d had for years and used every day. But, it wasn’t…
In his eponymous book, Jonah follows an exodus pattern. He travels through the waves and east of the city into the wilderness. On a first reading, it looks like another use of this common literary shape in the Old Testament: salvation through the waters of death and the wilderness of…
“Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” The unknowing master of ceremonies didn’t know how right he was. We see this play out in John’s apocalypse. The end is like the beginning,…
Read in isolation, The Test of Adultery (Num 5:11-31) presents the reader with a seemingly bizarre ritual, conjuring up ideas bordering on the Salem Witch Trials. Beyond this, pressing questions linger—such as, “Why is the woman in particular singled out, while no test is provided for the husband of a…
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In an article from the 1950s, Paul Kristeller traced the development of the system of the fine arts that everyone since at least Kant has taken for granted. He notes that this system, which considers some specific endeavours as “fine arts” separated from mere “crafts” or “artisanship,” was given a…
De Certeau suggests that Cusa’s Germanized Latin provides a linguistic illustration of his theory of the “coincidence of opposites”: “Germanisms haunt his Latin. They are the ghosts of a particular place (Rhineland, or Germany) in a different place, Latin, a language supposed to be ‘universal’ but in fact limited to…
Steven A. Walton provides an illuminating summary of the scholastic incorporation of mechanical arts into philosophy and theology. John the Scot first used the term artes mechanicae in the ninth century, and monasteries preserved and improved upon ancient technologies, but “they did not warrant inclusion in the philosophical canon.” Most…
In his treatise De Venatione Sapientiae , Nicholas of Cusa explained the Platonic doctrine of ideas as follows: “Ideas are not separated from individuals in such a way as to be extrinsic exemplars. For the individual’s nature is united to the Idea itself, from which it has all these [endowments]…
A friend, Jim Rogers, sends along this quotation from the late Richard Neuhaus: “Scholars generally agree that in the first century there were approximately six million Jews in the Roman Empire . . . That was about one tenth of the entire population. About one million were in Palestine, including…
Wow. That’s my initial reaction to a quick perusal of the opening chapters of Douglas Campbell’s The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul , just out from Eerdmans. Campbell attacks what he calls the “foundationalism” and “contractualism” that undergird “Justification theory” as it has been understood…
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