Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
“We have a God who hides things because He loves to be sought out, chewed out and found out.” As Christians, we are rightly taught that we must not question God’s Word. The problem is that the Scriptures record many things which appear to have been given to us for…
The book of Revelation is a liturgy. John begins “in the Spirit” on the “Lord’s day” (1:10). Jesus appears, and Jesus tells him to record messages to seven churches, words of encouragement and rebuke, like the call to worship and confession at the beginning of a Christian liturgy. In chapter…
In my previous posts, I looked at the theme of creation as it is found in a sequence of psalms devoted to Yahweh’s Kingship (Psalms 93-100). Among other matters, these psalms declare that when the Kingdom of Israel’s God comes, it is the Kingdom of the world’s own Creator .…
The church in Corinth was a pastoral nightmare. Factionalism, sexual immorality, incipient syncretism, using the church as a stage for self-promotion, and denial of the final resurrection were just some of the problems. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church, he confronts each of these problems directly and in…
The first chapters of the Word of God have a poetic rhythm. This is used to discredit their accuracy as historical narrative, but the truth is that these same rhythms continue far beyond the book of Genesis. In fact, the later texts shed light on the frustratingly succinct account of…
Mr. Martian: What’s that there? Mr. Edison: (Edison holds up a standard, 60 watt lightbulb). It’s a lightbulb. Mr. Martian: A “lightbulb” you say? What exactly is a “lightbulb”? Mr. Edison: A lightbulb is an object used to illuminate a dark area, say a room. It’s made primarily of filament…
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Martinus de Boer ( Galatians , 372) notes that the verb “walk by the Spirit” in Galatians 5:25 isn’t the normal peritateo but stoicheo , which means “stand or move in a row or line” as in a military formation. De Boer notes that “there may be an allusion, whether…
Several times in his The Godly Image , Romanus Cessario observes how Greek patristic writers influence Thomas’s understanding of the satisfaction of Christ. Cessario traces a shift from Thomas’s early Anselmian juridicism to a more personalist understanding of the atonement in his mature work. The difference, he suggests, had to…
The scientific revolution is often characterized as a revolution in method. In place of speculative, deductive metaphysical science came experimental, empirical science. Philip Ball ( Curiosity ) argues that behind this was a revolution in mentality, in the questions that could be asked and investigated: “To the new philosophers, the…
Katha Pollitt thinks that advocates of abortion rights have been cowed into meekness. In Pro , she argues that abortion needs to be reclaimed as a “positive social good,” and “an essential option for women — not just ones in dramatic, terrible, body-and-soul-destroying situations, but all women — and thus…
Julia Kristeva’s vigorous, rambling Teresa, My Love is a very personal reaction to the life and writings of Teresa of Avila. Kristeva, a noted feminist cultural theorist, doesn’t share St. Teresa’s faith. Still, she gets to the heart of Teresa’s mysticism in this quotation: “After the dialogical Socrates, before the…
The desire of the flesh is set against the desire of the Spirit, Paul says, so that the two are in opposition (Galatians 5:17). Where they clash, the combat stymies human choice: “you may not do the things that you wish” (cf. Romans 7). By returning to the “flesh” of…
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