Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If 1 Chronicles were a movie, it would begin with two hours and forty-five minutes of credits: Name after name scrolling across the screen, most of them (as far as we’re concerned) obscurities and nonentities and unknowns, forgotten fathers and sons and mighty men; all the bit players in the…
Let me locate myself. I’m sitting on a sand dune, three hundred feet above the blue-as-a-swimmer-crab water of Lake Michigan. I’m so high above the surface that the sound of the waves flopping onto the beach is as quiet as wind easing through a screen door. Around me are several…
My title is too grand. What I offer here falls far short of a full description of poetry. I barely offer a definition. A more accurate title would be “Axioms and Suspicions About Poetry.” Axioms first. I have three of them. The first is the closest I can come to…
In his book In Defense of Food Michael Pollan does just what the title suggests, he defends food. Pollan argues that the presupposition behind modern food science, or “nutritionism” as he calls it, is that humans don’t need food, they need nutrients. To be sure, modern science is not yet…
The early church took possession of the Roman Empire within a few centuries, largely because she ministered sacrificially in word and deed. The church provided services and care that the empire and pagan religions could not in times of crisis. The faithful witness of those serving Christians bore great fruit…
My title, “The Original Murder” will be understood by many readers, if not almost all, to refer to Cain’s murder of Abel, but I have in mind the very first murder, the one which Jesus pointed to when He said that Satan was a murderer “from the beginning.” “You are…
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In his monograph on Divine Simplicity , Steven J. Duby discusses the relation between metaphysics and dogmatics. He writes, "In addition to Thomas's metaphysics, the metaphysical works of Bartholomaus Keckermann, Johann Alsted, and Johannes Maccovius provide guidance here. For Keckermann, metaphysics is 'the science of being [ entis ], or…
Wesley Bergen's Reading Ritual explores Leviticus through the lens of contemporary popular culture. Instead of treating Leviticus as "religious" ritual in opposition to daily life, he tries to de-de-familiarize Leviticus ritual by finding parallels with contemporary culture. In the first chapter, he examines the ritual dimensions of a meat-packing plant,…
In the third volume of his magisterial Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics , Richard Muller offers a helpful summary of pre-Reformation discussions of divine simplicity. Today, simplicity is making a comeback, taken as essential to orthodoxy. Muller's discussion is a healthy reminder that "the doctrine of divine simplicity has not always been…
In Can We Trust the Gospels? , Peter J. Williams, Principal at Tyndale House, Cambridge, doesn't aim to prove that the gospels are true. He wants to show rather that "they can be rationally trusted" (120). If successful, this demonstration is a big deal, as Williams says on the closing…
Literally, woodenly translated, the 9th Word is: "Thou shalt not answer ( 'anah ) with/against your neighbor a false witness." The verb 'anah is of interest, mainly because it is such an uninteresting word. Of the 300+ times it's used in the Old Testament, the KJV translates it as "answer"…
Children provide a test case for psychological and epistemological theories. Many theories fail: They do not suffer the little children to come to them. That's part of the point of Vasudevi Reddy's fascinating How Infants Know Minds . The title contains the thesis: Infants know other minds. They don't act…
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