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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Matthew 6:17-18: But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that you may not be seen fasting by men, but by your heavenly Father, who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. Fasting was a duty of Jewish piety, and…
Matthew 3:17: At Jesus’ baptism, a voice from heaven said, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased. Baptism is an adoption rite. By baptism, Jacob enters the family of God. He is going to gain dozens of older brothers and sisters, lots of parents, a heavenly Father,…
Some sins are obvious. Murder is both a sinful act and arises from a sinful motive. After a murder, there’s a dead body and a murderer with a smoking gun. Murder is obviously and thoroughly evil. And the same is true of adultery, theft, false witness, and a host of…
At the beginning of Book 11 of Apuleius’s Golden Ass , Lucius returns to his human shape by prayer. As David Garland points out, the prayer is a good illustration of the kind of pagan prayers Jesus condemns in the sermon on the mount. In William Adlington’s 1556 translation, it…
Alex the African Grey died on September 6 at the age of 31. According to the obit in the Economist , Irene Pepperberg, a theoretical chemist who worked with Alex, had worked with Alex to the point that he “had the intelligence of a five-year-old child and had not yet…
In his splendid performance history of Shakespeare, David Bevington frequently comments on the “scenic literalism” of film and television. Commenting on a TV production of As You Like It , he laments that the production “tells us where we are in the story by putting entire landscapes or interiors in…
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