Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
G.K. Chesterton assumes a surprising and memorable perspective from which to view the events of Palm Sunday (Matthew 21:1-11) The Donkey by: G.K. Chesterton When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born. With monstrous head…
There is a common biblical principle: you must give back what you steal. In the Bible, restitution is repayment with interest. If you rob someone of their money, you have to pay back double what you stole. A thief must pay back fourfold if he steals a sheep, and if…
Identifying Isaiah’s suffering servant with the promised Messiah is unthinkable for a Jew because it combines the offices of humble priest and victorious king. While it is frustrating that Jews refuse to see the sufferings of Christ in Isaiah 53, the reluctance of Christians to interpret the passage in its…
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Psalm 150:6 (ESV) The command to praise God is pervasive throughout Scripture. In the verse above the Spirit calls all things with breath to praise the Lord. Song is also clearly featured all throughout Scripture and is a featured…
“Gender is a social construct.” That’s shocking to people who have assumed that gender and sex were synonyms but at least since I was in college, in the ‘80s, we were taught that “gender” refers to the forms, the customs, the traditions that our culture teaches us to define what…
In Genesis 49, Jacob prophesies about (blesses and curses?) his twelve sons. The first three of them don’t fare well. Jacob recalls Reuben’s offense of taking his concubine (Genesis 35:22) and the murderous violence of Simeon’s and Levi against the Canaanite inhabitants of the city of Shechem (Genesis 34). He…
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Many scholars have pointed to the fact that the tabernacle is an architectural representation of Mount Sinai. The tabernacle is divided into three zones - court, holy place, most holy place - with different degrees of access; Sinai was organized the same way. The altar of ascensions in the courtyard…
From both left and right, critics of Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis have criticized her as a law-breaker. Supporters of same-sex marriage say that her religious scruples don't give her the right to pick and choose what responsibilities she'll fulfill. Critics from the right have said her stance is a…
In Life Together , Bonhoeffer explains that “Christian community is not an ideal, but a divine reality” (quoted in Paul House, Bonhoeffer's Seminary Vision , 109). That is not merely a theoretical distinction. In Bonhoeffer's opinion, “On innumerable occasions a whole Christian community has been shattered because it has lived…
At the beginning of Exodus, Pharaoh is spooked by Israel's teeming growth. To keep them in check, he instructs the midwives to kill all Hebrew boys and spare the girls (Exodus 1:16). The girls will presumably be raised as Egyptians, become Egyptian wives and mothers, and Israel will be neutralized…
Lesslie Newbigin ( Reunion of the Church , 129-131) explains that the Church of South India (CSI) statement regarding Scripture “excludes the possibility of treating the Scriptures merely as the earliest expression of the continuous faith of the Church, and treats the faith of the Church as a response, continuously…
In a forthcoming book on The Inequality Trap , William Watson argues that the contemporary obsession with inequality is both an error and a trap. An error because “inequality, unlike poverty, is not the problem it is so widely presumed to be. Inequality can be good, it can be bad,…
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