Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
1 Chronicles 9:1 seems to bring the genealogies of 1 Chronicles to an end. The Chronicler has recorded the genealogy of the human race from Adam, focusing on the descendants of Abraham through Jacob. Summing it all up, he says, “So all Israel was enrolled by genealogies; and behold, they…
The “personalist” understanding of the Trinity, articulated most influentially in the work of John Zizioulas, has fallen on hard times. Recent scholars have attacked Zizioulas’s idea that Cappadocian Trinitarianism represented an ontological revolution, hammering on the distinction between divine and human personhood. Michel Barnes’s conclusion is the most drastic of…
Biblical Theology is often defined as the historical unfolding of God’s revelation, or of God’s revelation and of the history of his covenantal redemption and transformation of humanity and the world. In practice, Biblical Theology is usually broader than this, and also includes the study of literary structure and of…
We are made to be happy. Created to enter into the eternal joy of God, our whole being inclines to that end, but the fallen world has put forth barriers and by our own sin we bar ourselves from that endless delight, and death blinds us to that reality. Yet…
At the end of Revelation, John sees the heavenly city descending to earth. The city shines with the brilliance of God's glory, which lightens the nations, so that kings bring their glory to the city. This is not a vision of the final new heaven and new earth. It's a…
“No one has ever seen God,” writes John (John 1:18). If this is the case, then how can we speak about God? Some people say we actually cannot. Or at least we cannot speak about God positively, i.e. who He is. We can only say who or what God is…
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Masudi’s 10th-century Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems gives the history of the world from Eden to the author’s own time. His account of early humanity is clearly drawn partly from Genesis, but other accounts are thoroughly mixed in. When God determined to create Adam as a “lieutenant on…
In his wise, wide-ranging contribution to Recent Developments in Trinitarian Theology , Christoph Schwobel argues that trinitarian theology necessitates a revision of metaphysical assumptions. “It is,” he writes, “one of the most significant discoveries of the classical disputes of trinitarian doctrine in the early church that the straightforward application of…
In his breezy review of Madonna’s career in Fame in the 20th Century , Clive James captures Madonna’s genius for self-reinvention. She “was called Madonna Louise Ciccone, but in her burning ambition for universal fame she didn’t want to rule out the large section of her potential audience that might…
The Ishmaelites who carry Joseph to Egypt are carrying “aromatic gum, balm, and myrrh” with them (Genesis 37:25), which are among the goods of the land that Jacob later sends to Vizier Joseph, not knowing he’s Joseph (cf. Genesis 43:11). This has several layers of meaning. As Jacob Hanby, a…
James Gleick’s NYTBR review of Vikram Chandra’s Geek Sublime places the book in the context of CP Snow’s “two cultures.” As programmer-turned novelist, Chandra crosses the cultures, and his book aspires, Gleick says, “to look deeply, and with great subtlety, into the connections and tensions between the worlds - the…
Justin Marozzi’s recently released Baghdad vividly recounts the glory and anguish of a city that was, for several centuries, considered the “most prosperous city in the world.” It’s name has been variously translated as “Gift of God” or “Founded by God.” Founded by the Abbasid Caliph Mansur in the eighth…
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