Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Creationism is debated widely in the US, especially when it comes to teaching creation as an alternative theory of origins in public schools. Every few months, there’s another poll showing that many Americans still believe Ussher’s claim that the world was created around 4000 BC, which always elicits a contemptuous…
Walker Percy died in 1990, but his six published novels and his collections of essays are more relevant than when he wrote them. Percy was an American Dostoevsky, and that was no accident. “The European novels,” he says in a 1974 interview, “are more philosophical, more novels of ideas.” Dostoevsky,…
The Spirit is God’s agent for renewing the creation, for restoring bonds between nations, for knitting together people into the body of Christ. The Spirit is the renewer of the world, and the bond of all relations. That means that if you want your family to be knit together, if…
In their basic physical sense , the verbs translated as "persecute" in the Bible mean “chase” or “pursue,” and that fits the context quite naturally. As Pharaoh “pursued” (LXX, dioko ; Heb. radaph ) Israel into the wilderness, for example, so the dragon chases the woman back to her place…
Seng-Kong Tan’s Fullness Received and Returned is a densely argued, thoroughly researched, contextually sensitive study of participation in the soteriology of Jonathan Edwards. Along the way, Tan deals with many of the central themes in Edwards’s theology. As with many recent studies of Edwards, Tan’s monograph demonstrates both Edwards’s creativity…
The title of James Joyce’s first novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man indicates that it is a bildungsroman , a story of formation that describes the formative experiences of a poet who aspires to artistic greatness. The education described is Joyce’s own. The novel recounts the failing…
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Thomas Aquinas explained the Triune Persons as subsistent relations: “As to essence, the Father is in the Son because the Father is his essence and he shares it with the Son without any change taking place in himself” ( ST I, 42). Stephen Long explains Thomas’s claim that Father, Son…
For the past five years, I have blogged here at First Things . I was surprised and grateful when Matt Schmitz first offered me this prominent venue, and I remain humbled at the privilege and the astonishing freedom I've had to write and publish to my heart's content. A huge…
Every Friday, I compile snippets into a potpourri of musings and mutterings, served up in a Friday Flurry (not available at DQ). God made us to be knowers. We long to know. Esther Meek argues ( Longing to Know ) that the frustration of this desire is one of the…
The following is an extract from chapter 1 of my Against Christianity (Canon Press, 2003). 1 The Bible never mentions Christianity. It does not preach Christianity, nor does it encourage us to preach Christianity. Paul did not preach Christianity, nor did any of the other apostles. During centuries when the…
A few reflections on Barth’s discussion of the Trinity in Church Dogmatics 1.1, ch 10. 1) Barth insists that Trinitarian theology developed not as a qualification of monotheism but as a way of defending monotheism: “Christian monotheism was and is also and precisely the point also and precisely in the…
In his book on giving and forgiving ( Free of Charge ), Miroslav Volf summarizes Luther's metaphor of the "flow" of God's love. Human love sometimes sucks the life and love out of us, but not God's love. Rather, as Luther says, "it flows forth and bestows good" (quoted 49).…
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