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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Christ’s death fulfills the figures of Israel’s sacrificial system ( ST III, 48, 3). It exceeds them in being the sacrifice of human flesh for humanity. But it’s not just reality in relation to figure, but is itself a figure, a “sign for of something to be observed by us.”…
How could Christ’s death be a sacrifice, since “those men who slew Christ did not perform any sacred act but rather wrought a great wrong”? ( ST , III, 48, 3). Christ’s passion is no sacrificium but a maleficium . Thomas answers by stressing the voluntary character of Christ’s death.…
Did Christ effect salvation by way of redemption? Thomas asks ( ST III, 48, 4). It’s a question about salvation as payment . The first objection states that Christ could not have saved by way of redemption because no one buys or buys back ( emit vel redimit ) what…
NT Wright has argued for some time, beginning with The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology , that the “one seed” who is Christ (Galatians 3:16) refers to a corporate reality, the single family of Abraham who are collectively called Christ. He points out that…
In Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age ,Victor Mayer-Schonberger explores the reversal of memory and forgetfulness in the digital age: “Since the beginning of time, for us humans, forgetting has been the norm and remembering the exception. Because of digital technology and global networks, however, this balance…
In his exhaustive study of Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible: The Social and Literary Context , David Instone-Brewer notes that “Cruelty and humiliation were . . . recognized as grounds for divorce and are related to emotional neglect in the Mishnah” (107). Both husbands and wives could be charged…
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