Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Christian tradition has always had an uneasy relationship with the materiality of creation. Dirt, liquid, sex, blood, and bodies—the world and the flesh stand in company with the Devil as two of the three great enemies of the saints. Mundus, caro, et diabolus , as the old Latin saying…
Since the destruction of Jerusalem was an event of earth-shattering covenantal significance, what might be the meaning of the subsequent tragic events at the desert fortress of Masada? In Hebrew, the name Masada means “strong foundation or support,” from a root meaning “to hunt, lie in wait for prey.” Located…
Take a long look at the photo above. To whom is this woman praying? It is hard to tell, isn’t it? Suppose we watch her for a while. We may see her bow low to the floor. Her lips may move, though perhaps it is too low for us to…
Psalm 137 is widely regarded as one of the meanest of the imprecatory psalms. Certainly as we read it it is seems to be a song of pure vengeance. The exiles in Babylon, in grief over the judgment that Babylon has brought upon them, pray for the destruction of that…
Forty men and women came from all over the United States to attend the 2018 Trinity Term course at Theopolis. Pastors, students, teachers, an electrician, a city planner, and others from a variety of denominations spent five days at Beeson Divinity School studying covenant epistemology under the tutelage of philosopher…
Matthew records that Jesus "withdrew" to Galilee to begin His public ministry there after He "heard that John had been delivered up" (Mt. 4:12). Matthew’s typically matter-of-fact style veils the truly remarkable character of Jesus’ withdrawal. Matthew has been presenting Jesus as the Messiah, the Seed of Abraham and Son…
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The Bible speaks of children from beginning to end, the history it tells is a history of children. To recite the story of children in Scripture would be to recite Scripture. In the beginning: Adam was born of earth and divine breath, naked as a newborn. The protoevangelium is a…
"Modern" is an invention of the Christian Middle Ages. According to Krishan Kumar ( From Post-Industrial to Post-Modern Society ), " Modernus , from modo (‘recently’, ‘just now’) was a late Latin coinage on the model of hodiernus (from hodie , ‘today’). It was first used, as an antonym to…
The description of Solomon’s temple in 1 Kings 6 employs a number of anatomical terms: The temple has a “face” (v. 3), “ribs” (vv. 5, 8), and “shoulders” (7:39). The language makes it clear that already in the OT the temple is “humaniform.” We can be more specific: The “ribs”…
Craig Gay ( The Way of the (Modern) World ) lucidly traces a line of development from Descartes’ separation of the human subject from the world of objects, through the Cartesian and Newtonian effort to reduce science to mathematics, to the triumph of technical manipulation. At the end point, the…
The following is an excerpt from my Brightest Heaven of Invention , published in the misty days of the mid-1990s. Claudio looks at Hero’s appearance, and concludes she is a maid, a virgin. Because of Don John’s deception, he believes that he has peeled away the deceptive outer layer, the…
Kathryn Schulz observes that "One of the strangest things about the human mind is that it can reason about unreasonable things. It is possible, for example, to calculate the speed at which the sleigh would have to travel for Santa Claus to deliver all those gifts on Christmas Eve. It…
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