Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Pastor John Piper has written on why he (probably) won’t be voting in this month’s presidential election. Reading his argument, I couldn’t help wondering if voting has a cultic significance to Piper. As much as self-admitted Christian Trump-voters are characterized as cult followers, Never Trump Christians often strike me as…
Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself… –– Victor Frankenstein In Mary Shelley’s classic novel, Victor Frankenstein is a young intellectual with an excessive thirst for glory and worldwide acclaim. Having lost his beloved mother, Frankenstein works to…
“Our daughter is just like a baby hippo,” my wife says to me as I hang my coat up. “After we watched a video of hippos munching whole watermelons, she sat down to her own watermelon lunch. She gobbled them up with those same puffy cheeks and big eyes.” My…
Christian compromise with Nazi Germany’s political leadership is well documented in painful detail. There was resistance, but it was the exception rather than the rule. German Christianity was terribly timid. Leadership lacked spiritual strength because of serious Biblical ignorance and unbelief. But it was not just the leaders. Christians in…
Can a Christian vote for Donald Trump? That might seem like a surprising question given the widespread evangelical support for the President. Yet for a growing number of evangelicals, to vote for Trump is to endorse his moral repugnancy and further discredit gospel-believing Christians who have sold their birthright for…
Thirty-eight years is a long time to take getting somewhere (Deut. 2:14). You could just ask anyone in the unfaithful generation of people whom God brought to the edge of the Promised Land the first time under Moses—if they were still alive, that is (Num. 14:22-23, 32-35). But there are…
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Jesus prayed that the church's unity would reflect the unity of the Father and Son. Paul urged the Ephesians to cultivate the virtues of peace that would express the sevenfold unity of the church (Ephesians 4). That demand is a perennial one. But we've been divided for a long time.…
Israel is a vine, transplanted from Egypt (Psalm 80; Isaiah 5). She exists to produce wine that gladdens the hearts of men. Israel is the Dionysian people. Ezekiel brings out another dimension of the vine image: “Son of man, how is the wood of the vine better than any wood…
The oracle of judgment in Ezekiel 14:12-23 is structured as a fourfold judgment: sword, famine, beasts, plague (v. 21). The descriptions of judgment are laid out in four paragraphs that use repetitive, stereotyped language. Throughout, Yahweh says that even the intercession of Noah, Daniel, and Job could not rescue Judah…
In a TLS review of several recent books on fairy tales, Fracesca Wade points to the political context and economic setting of early folk and fairy tale collections. Inspired by Herder, the Grimms, she observes, intended to recover Germanitas by study of natural German poetry: “Although the brothers drew widely…
In his Deja Vu and the End of History , Italian philosopher Paolo Virno explores the phenomenology of memory, especially in its relation to philosophies of history. The deja vu of the title isn't a metaphor; following Henri Bergson, Virno argues that it represents “the untrammelled extension of memory's jurisdiction,…
Paolo Virno ( Deja Vu and the End of History ) observes that potential and act occur simultaneously. Take language: “The language faculty irrupts into becoming in concomitance with the phrase that I am speaking. It appears precisely now, as I speak, neither before nor afterwards: but, note, right now…
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