Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Platitudes are often sayings whose truthfulness is so apparent, so accepted, and so repeated that they are divested of their power and in fact become the object of ridicule. Their failure lies in their fame, and the contempt they invite is bred by their familiarity. To say that children are…
Click here to download the Translation Here we have the seven-fold Voice of Yahweh, bracketed by two sets of four lines about Yahweh. The central seven-fold Voice section uses "Yahweh" ten times, for a total in this psalm of eighteen usages of "Yahweh" (3 x 3 x 2). The psalm,…
As Adam and Eve walked to the Garden of Eden to meet with Yahweh on their first Sabbath they conversed about the origin and age of the earth. Adam: You know, honey, we spent a lot of time yesterday making preparations for this house, and we still have an awful…
Knowing His paths through Moses and David, in the darkness of the prophets we yet walk in His light. It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted…
These days, to be “candid” is to be frank, honest, genuine. But the word didn’t always mean that. It used to be the name for a virtue that we don’t really have a name for anymore. Its obsolete meaning is “kindliness”: a disposition to think well of others, a tendency…
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Deuteronomy 7:13 gives a succinct summary of Yahweh’s promise to Israel. When Israel goes into the land, He will “love you and bless you and multiply you.” This triad appears to be a sequence: Yahweh loves, and therefore blesses; and blessing, as in the creation account, brings increase - He…
William Deresiewicz wants to preserve the stature of John Updike. In his TNR review of Adam Begley’s Updike , Deresiewicz contends that the current eclipse of Updike won’t last. For the moment, David Foster Wallace’s crack that Updike is a “penis with a thesaurus” will be the elite opinion, but…
Leonid Bershidsky isn’t impressed with the Apple Watch: “The Apple Watch isn’t a tech miracle. It requires a phone to work, creating an Occam’s-razor moment for the consumer: Do I need another device if I still have to carry my phone around with me everywhere? Samsung has overcome this by…
Neuroscientist Jeffrey Zacks says that filmmakers know a lot about how brains work, even if they couldn’t explain the science. After all, they’re able to get people to pay good money to watch light flickering on a screen, and they can get these people frightened, sad, jubilant in the space…
Fairy tales obviously have played an enormous role in folk culture over the centuries. Less well known perhaps is the role fairy tales have played in the intellectual life of the modern age, the age when we’ve given up belief in fairies. The collection compiled by the Brothers Grimm had…
Pastor Rich Lusk of Trinity Presbyterian Church, Birmingham, suggests that the “leaven of their Pharisees” isn’t simply their teaching, but their entire vision of the coming kingdom. For the Pharisees, as Marcus Borg pointed out, the kingdom could come only if Israel pursued holiness by means of separation. At the…
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