Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The corona virus hit Western society like a Biblical plague — almost. Biblical plagues were actually much more devastating. Still, as Peter Leithart describes the present situation, it is a judgment from God, because the disease itself together with our political solutions brought about a social situation that fits Deuteronomy’s…
“The achievements of theologians don’t do anything, don’t affect anything, don’t mean anything. What makes anyone think that ‘theology’ is a subject at all?” - Richard Dawkins One cannot be a Christian college president or seminary trustee (your essayist is both) without wondering if Richard Dawkins’s notorious take-down of theology…
Nearly every church that I am aware of has adopted differing practices since the recent virus scare began. Some churches continued to meet during the state lock downs, and other churches left their building empty, meeting online through various video conference technologies. Some churches have gone back to life as…
Fear is an inseparable companion of human life. We are afraid of illness and death, poverty and cataclysms, rejection and betrayal, failure and shame. We are afraid of the unknown, so in a sense we are afraid of the future and life itself. Unless we live in the illusory belief…
In the title above, I put the word “heresies” in quotation marks because I would prefer that the word “heresy” be confined to erroneous beliefs about the Trinity and the Person of Christ, rather than be used broadly to describe any view that might be considered an error. 1 At…
I’ve been trying to work out why I’m feeling existentially disconnected from CoV-19-related fears. I’m taking it seriously, but it’s not registering in any deeply personal way. Partly it’s that my routines are largely undisrupted. But as I reflect on people’s reactions I think there’s more, because a lot of…
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“Being lonely is a lot more worrying for your health than obesity,” writes Philippa Perry . She draws on research by John Cacioppo that shows that for the elderly “Feeling isolated from others can disrupt sleep, raise blood pressure, lower immunity, increase depression, lower overall subjective wellbeing and increase the…
Stephen Finlan ( The Background and Contents of Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors ) thinks that Paul mixes his metaphors: “Paul indicates that salvation is not free: ‘you were bought with a price’ (1 Cor 6:20; 7:23). Here, the Christian gets a new owner: Christ. The death of Jesus functioned as…
Jacob Milgrom argued that the notion that Yahweh was appeased by sacrificial aromas is rare, and that the notion that Yahweh fed on sacrificial food was found only in “rare linguistic fossils” ( Leviticus 1-16 , 250). Finlan ( Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors , 30) rightly protests: “Forty-two instances of…
Before assessing the Best Picture nominees at TNR , David Thomson reminds us what the Best Picture award is: “First of all, remind yourself that ‘Best Picture’ is not a certificate of value passed down by God. It is a construct, and a con, dreamed up by the American Academy…
Reviewing Colin Burrow’s Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity in the TLS , Michael Silk refers to Dante’s debt to Virgil, and then observes: “There is surely no counterpart to this in the case of Shakespeare - though one might perhaps consider it (Burrow himself doesn’t quite) in connection with Seneca.” He…
Tim Crane points out in his TLS review of John Caputo’s Truth that “Aristotelian” ideas of truth are in no way incompatible with the insight that there is a plurality of perspectives on truth: “to believe in truth in this [Aristotelian] sense is not to believe that there is only…
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