Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Every advent of new media creates the justifiable reaction from some that the necessarily accompanied amputation may not be worth the extension made possible by the new tools. This is not unique to the Digital Age. Lamoignon Malesherbes, the French politician who was counsel for the defense of Louis XVI,…
A response to Gage Crowder's " The Hole in our Hope ?" Already, the first pages of the Bible promise a bright future. The story starts with the creation of heaven and earth, where heaven is perfect, but the earth is in a state of formless emptiness. Yet, God takes…
A rejoinder to Bubu Jarmulak's essay, " Embrace Pessimism ." Whereas calumnious critiques are reflections of more on the critic than the work criticized, good critiques are always opportunities for reassessment and improvement if they are received as such . Since its renaissance, the biblical doctrine of postmillennialism—or “optimistic eschatology,”…
Several decades ago, a pastor (and friend) mentioned in passing at one of our regular breakfasts together that he wasn’t satisfied with the usual reading of Jesus’s prayer in Gethsemane, the usual reading being that Jesus asked the Father to avoid the Cross at Gethsemane. We turned to the passage,…
On May 21, 1604, the cathedral of Toledo in Spain held job interviews for the post of choirmaster, the head of music at the church. The position had been vacated when the previous occupant, Alonso Lobo, was poached by the nearby cathedral of Seville, and Toledo needed a replacement who…
Imagine — counterfactually: on the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus held up an empty hand and said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant poured out for you. Drink of it.’ But there was no cup, no wine, nothing. If there’s no sign of the covenant, is there…
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David Ganz (essay in The Languages of Gift in the Early Middle Ages , 21) quotes this from the decree of the Council or Synod of Macon, 585: “We have learned from the report of the brethren that some churches in some places have deviated from the divine command in…
A couple of lines from Auden’s The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (W.H. Auden: Critical Editions) have been sticking with me: “Lies and lethargies police the world / In its periods of peace.” Start with the cynical substance of the lines. Lies and lethargies don’t corrupt or ruin the…
A student, David Henry, points out that the word “fish” is used three times in Jonah 1-2, and notes that twice it is masculine ( dag ; 1:17; 2:10) but once in a feminine form ( dagah ; 2:1). A gender-bending fish? Uncertainty on the part of the writer? Or…
Next door at the “On the Square” yesterday ( http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2012/12/purify-her-uncleanness ), Orthodox writer Carrie Frederick Frost ponders the Orthodox traditions of churching women after childbirth. She points out that the rites are comparatively late: Not until the 12th century are there rites for purification of women. And she says that…
In a 2002 article on stem cell research in The Public Interest , Leon Kass offered a gruesomely memorable test for the claim that a human embryo is nothing but a piece of tissue. On the one hand, he noted, if an embryo dies “we are sad—largely for her loss…
James B. Jordan has been a friend of mine since his student days at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. I was his teacher there, but since then he has taught me many things. Jim is a Bible scholar who digs far below the surface of the text. He is an expert…
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