Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety. (1 Timothy 2:15) Years ago, the wife of a prominent American theologian recognized that even in Christian circles mothers were under a kind of social pressure to justify the worthwhileness of their…
I caught my five year old washing his hands again. He had already washed them several times that hour, so I asked him if he was okay. He told me he didn’t want to get “the virus”. That was before I had told him anything about coronavirus, but we did…
Very early in life, I developed the habit of walking and thinking and meditating. I came from a rather strict home, and the only way I could get out of the house at night was to walk the dog. So, I did. I would walk the dog for miles and…
From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us. The Fourth Deprecation from Thomas Cranmer's 1544 Litany 1 A deprecation, such as that above, is a prayer to be spared from disaster, its Latin root deprecari meaning to…
In the previous essay in this series, we saw that Jesus’ words about coming on the clouds were spoken on more than one occasion, first to the disciples on the Mount of Olives (Matthew 24:30; Mark 11:36; Luke 21:27), then, a few days later, to the high priest and Jewish…
The following is excerpted from an essay first published at Church Life Journal . We are grateful to the editors for permission to repost here. The word “science” at its root means “to know” and the word “theology” at its root means “to think about God.” Can we know anything…
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Protestants have often been charged with promoting an individualist reading of Scripture, what with our confession of sola scriptura . That charge, I submit, arises from a misunderstanding of what the Bible is. In Psalm 119:24, the Psalmist declares his delight in the “testimonies” of Yahweh, and adds that these…
Greeks have a reputation for Apollonian rationality and calm, but that’s at best only part of the story. In the NYTBR , Caroline Alexander describes the Dionysian underside of classical Greece: “On Mount Lykaion (‘wolf mountain” in Arcadia, annual traditions honoring Zeus re-enacted a seminal rite of human sacrifice. In…
Richard Beck responds to my review of his Slavery of Death at the Trinity House site.
Mark W. Elliott’s Engaging Leviticus is a compendium of historical commentary on the book of Leviticus. Organized chapter-by-chapter, Elliott draws together patristic, medieval, and modern commentators, mostly Christian but including some Jewish commentators along the way. That organization creates some difficulties for the reader. Elliott’s book is packed with information,…
Origen interpreted the instructions about leprosy (Leviticus 13-14) as an “anatomy of spiritual disease” (Elliott, Engaging Leviticus , 132): “There are six types of spiritual plague, which can be taken as three pairs of types - each pair composed of disease that is curable (in this life) and incurable (in…
I want to talk about death. No, the flowers haven’t confused me. I’m aware that this is a wedding and not a funeral, but still: I intend to talk about death. What I want to talk about is real death. I’m not using the word metaphorically. I want to talk…
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