Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Introduction Isaiah 21 can only be understood in the light of its placement in the architecture of the second “volume” of the prophecy (chapters 13–27). The contents are arranged in twin sevenfold “columns” that represent the great bronze pillars of Solomon’s Temple: Jachin and Boaz, priest and king. The priestly…
A Biblical Reflection on the Purpose of the Constellations The starry heavens hold a place of wonder in the hearts of men. Since man’s creation we have looked up into the heavens and have beheld its glory. This is particularly true of the night sky. The stars, in their shinning…
The case for there being five discourses within the Gospel according to Matthew is a hard one to challenge: surely the closing formula “when Jesus finished these sayings” as found in 8:1, 11:1, 13:53, 19:1, and 26:1 settles it once and for all. And by the five instances of the…
The Long Commission The Great Commission of Matthew 28 has long been a cornerstone of American Evangelicalism. It has formed and fashioned the American church’s missional impulse. Yet when viewed from the wide lens of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, the Great Commission is revealed as one of the pillars…
I am delighted to see that more and more churches in the Reformed tradition are now recognizing that all baptized children are members of the body of Christ and therefore ought to be communing with the rest of the body at the Lord’s Table. This has been decades in the…
Good leaders have always been rare. In today’s world, they seem extinct. Joe Rigney’s recent book Leadership and Emotional Sabotage digs into the spiritual reasons for the leadership epidemic and recommends cures. Rigney starts with a summary of a book by Edwin Friedman called A Failure of Nerve . Friedman’s…
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In an essay on Poe in NYRB , Marilynne Robinson observes that “the horror that fascinated [Poe] and gave such dreadful unity to his tales is often the inescapable confrontation of the self by a perfect justice, the exposure of a guilty act in a form that makes its revelation…
Proverbs 6:16-20 lists seven things that God finds abominable and hateful. It’s a rich text. For starters, the “seven” stands out. God loves His creation since it is good; what He hates is a seven-fold inversion of creation. At the very least, we can say that the wicked person who…
The TLS review of the two-volume collection of The Poetry of Robert Herrick (edited by Tom Cain and Ruth Connolly) gives a brief review of Herrick’s reputation in the modern world. That reputation has been determined by attitudes to what the reviewer calls Herrick’s “gargantuan” appetite for the miniature. As…
John Milbank has written that John Duns Scotus is “the turning point in the destiny of the West.” Milbank focuses on Scotus’s notion of the “univocity of being,” which, according to Milbank, treated God and creation as encompassed by the larger, common reality of “being.” On the Scotist view, God’s…
President Obama wants European countries to do a better job of assimilating Muslims. Easy for an American President to say. Much harder for European nations to accomplish. George Friedman argues at Stratfor that “The current crisis has its origins in the collapse of European hegemony over North Africa after World…
Writing at Stratfor , George Friedman offers a sobering, pessimistic view of the future of Islam in Europe: “We are entering a place that has no solutions. Such a place does have decisions, and all of the choices will be bad.” At the moment, he admits, “It is difficult to…
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