Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
It is a well-known movie trope, the sports car drives up, a stiletto-heeled starlet steps out and the camera follows her leg up the prodigious slit of her dress, then it takes in the rest of her figure before settling on her face, usually primed and puckered for some pro-feminist…
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 again and again the distinction between divine and human personhood. Michel Barnes’s conclusion is the most…
I sit here in my office and poke around on a keyboard that is not even physically connected to my laptop and characters appear on a screen. I have a phone in my pocket through which I talk to someone around the world, send a text message, and to which…
I want to give a pep talk. Nothing fancy, nothing clever. Jesus makes some astounding promises in Luke 11. I want to clear out the clutter and convince you to believe Him and to act on it. The chapter begins with Jesus praying and teaching His disciples to pray by…
Eleonore Stump in her book Wandering in Darkness invites us to re-read the story of Lazarus (John 11) from Mary’s perspective. Stump argues that the story of Lazarus is a story of Mary, since both Lazarus and Martha are identified by their relationship with Mary. The true ending of the…
In his introduction to The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift in Honor of James B. Jordan , Peter Leithart says this about him: “Jordan is an unclassifiable thinker because he is an unclassifiable person . . . he closes his eyes in ecstasy listening to Messiaen or Rachmaninoff . .…
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Exodus 18’s description of Jethro’s advice to Moses seems disconnected from its context. As Martin Hauge explains ( Descent from the Mountain , 252), the story actually anticipates the entire narrative of chapters 19-40: “The story of the second day presents how parts of the Moses function were transferred to…
Recent studies of the Levitical system have questioned the “facile” links that commentators draw “between its ritual instructions and narratives, its theology, and Israel’s ritual practices” (James Watts, Ritual and Rhetoric in Leviticus , 15). Citing William Gilders ( Blood Ritual in the Hebrew Bible ) and Wesley Bergen (…
James Watts ( Ritual and Rhetoric , 87-88) calls attention to the repetitions of Leviticus 4-5, especially of the basic roots, cht (sin, sin offering) and ‘ shm (guilt, trespass offering): “the refrain ‘sin that he sinned . . . as sin’ appears eight times (4:3, 14, 23–24, 28, 5:6,…
Andrew Sullivan defends same-sex marriage as a “federalist” who is willing to wait for States to make the change. Not everyone is so patient, or Constitutional. CNN reports today that “Attorney General Eric Holder said the Justice Department will issue a memo Monday that recognizes same-sex marriages ‘to the greatest…
Lists typically don’t make for electrifying reading. Ancient lists in unknown languages less so. But in House Most High , A.R. George’s compilation of ancient Mesopotamian temple lists, the lists offer multiple insights into the structures of ancient religion. Topographical lists show the geographic distribution of temples; “theological” lists, lists…
For two and a half millennia, Mesopotamian cosmology saw the world as a multi-story universe. Wayne Horowitz ( Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography ) summarizes: “Sumerians and Akkadians understood the universe as consisting of superimposed levels separated by open space. From above to below, the levels were: a region of heaven above…
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