Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the Bible, fatness is such a blessing, that it is especially hard to understand why wicked men are permitted to enjoy such a state. It requires a theodicy and faith in God. Thus: “For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek . They are…
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The allusion to the Exodus story is contained in the first words of Deuteronomy 14:1 — “ye are the sons of Yahweh your God” — as well as in 14:2 in the use of the technical term translated “treasured possession,” “His own possession,” “peculiar people,” “precious people,” and so forth.…
I have argued that Deuteronomy 14:1-21 is an independent literary unit that applies the Third Word to the lives of Israelites from the time of Moses and Joshua. In this short pericope, Moses suggests broad and deep meaning by means of literary allusion to the stories of the creation and…
In his recently republished The New Creation , the late, delightful Herbert McCabe defends the priesthood of the plebs as roundly as anyone could want. Citing Hebrews, he claims that "there is an essential difference between the Christian community and the community of the Old Law, or any other religious…
Augustine famously prayed, “Our hearts our restless until they rest in You.” True indeed. Being creatures, we inherently sense our ontological poverty—our innate condition of dependence—and are compelled to find a sense of security. And it is also true—as Augustine’s own narrative painfully illustrates—that one of the things we most…
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The first “not good” thing in the Bible is Adam’s isolation and aloneness (Genesis 2:18). It’s the one discordant “not good” in a string of “goods” that ends with a “very good.” Later, Jethro tells Moses that spending his day judging the people without any help is “not good” (Exodus…
Isaiah charges that Judah has become a rebellious son, and enumerates the rebellions 65:2-5: 1) They walk in a way that is not good. 2) They follow their own thoughts. 3) They provoke Yahweh to His face. 4) The sacrifice in gardens. 5) They burn incense on bricks. 6) They…
The Washington Post reports on a study that assesses the impact of religious affiliation on job applications. “Researchers Michael Wallace, Bradley R.E. Wright and Allan Hyde of the University of Connecticut sent 3,200 fake applications to 800 jobs within 150 miles of two major Southern cities through a popular employment…
Back in 1952, AHN Green-Armytage wrote this splendid description of the world of critical scholarship: “There is a world - I do not say a world in which all scholars live but one at any rate into which all of them sometimes stray, and which some of them seem permanently…
Adriaan Vlok was minister of law and order in South Africa during the apartheid years. As the New Republic reports, he is making amends in a dramatic way. He recently visited one of his victims, Frank Chikane, a black minister: “He’d written it on the front flyleaf of a Bible.…
Jesus taught His disciples to pray to “our Father,” and that has rightly been given a Christological gloss: Jesus and His disciples address a common Father. But that form of address is not wholly unprecedented. Twice Isaiah refers to a group that addresses Yahweh as “our Father” (63:16; 64:8). The…
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