Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In Colossians 4:7-9, Paul tells the Colossian church that he is sending Tychicus and Onesimus to them. It is clear that they are to deliver the letter Paul has written to the church and that they are also to report to the church the details of Paul’s ministry in chains…
On the 11 th of April, 1985, the communist dictator Enver Hoxha breathed his last. It was the beginning of the end of communist Albania. After 40 years of being isolated from almost the entire world, the Albanian people started to see what life really looked like outside their borders.…
Karl Ove Knausgaard once reminisced about an author he referred to as “the man with his sweater tucked into his trousers” who, upon entering the room, would declare as if it was his creed, “I write because I am dying.” Knausgaard acknowledges this to be one reason among many why…
The Missing “It Was Good” The patterns and repetitions of Genesis 1 are well known: God speaks, it happens, and God sees that it’s good; names are given, and there’s evening and there’s morning: a day. But the patterns of creation, like the patterns throughout Scripture, are marked by variation…
And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the…
The Bible is a book about trees. We start in Eden with two trees, we end in the New Jerusalem with a single double-trunked tree, and the story hinges around the tree they nailed our Lord to. Seeing the Forest We find trees singled out on day three of creation.…
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D avid's plan for the temple is partly a floor plan. He gives Solomon the pattern for the “porch” and its associated buildings, treasuries, rooms, courts (1 Chronicles 28:11-12). The plan also includes instructions for organizing the priests and Levites (28:13a) and for the utensils of service for the temple…
I n his recently-published The Great Leveller , Walter Scheidel summarizes evidence from archeology and anthropological studies to answer the question, Has inequality always been with us? The answer is: Sort of yes. Inequality is a constant in societies that farm and herd. But farming and land ownership weren't the…
D avid gives Solomon the “plan” (Heb. tabnit ) for the temple. Unlike Moses, David doesn't have to climb a mountain to get it (cf. Exodus 25:9, 40). It comes from “the spirit ( ruach ) with him” (1 Chronicles 28:12), and from a “writing” from the Lord that comes…
I n an essay in the journal European Legacy , Norman Fiering summarizes the thought of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy on biography. Fiering asks whether there are recurring patterns in the lives of significant individuals, and, relying on Rosenstock-Huessy, calls attention to moments of “conversion” (not necessarily religious) and “grace” (unexpected encounters…
I n his 1971 study of Modernist architecture, The Golden City , Henry Hope Reed observed that Modernists transferred moral categories to architecture. Buildings could be “honest” (if they revealed their structure on the surface) or “false” (if they hid structure under ornamentation). Purity was invoked regularly as a positive…
W hat is “the Gothic”? Answers vary, and that is, Catherine Spooner argues (in Post-Millennial Gothic ), because Gothic bears “multivalent meanings” and “has adapted and changed with the times” (9–10). This isn't a recent development: “After Gothic's initial phase of popularity fizzled out around 1820, it quickly renewed itself…
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