Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
There is no question about the fact that the book of Deuteronomy is full of literary allusion. But there is a serious problem, even a paradox, of understanding how that allusion works. To begin with, if we assume that Deuteronomy was written by Moses — with some editorial emendations added…
Genesis and Genetics in Blade Runner 2049 The power of science fiction, and what’s positive about it, is that you’re able to experience the worst-case scenario without actually having to live it. (Actor Ryan Gosling, who plays Officer “K”) (Warning: The following analysis contains spoilers for both Blade Runner films.)…
The battle of Gog and Magog is found in Ezekiel 38-39. My purpose in this brief essay is to propound an explanation for this passage that I have not encountered in any of my commentaries, but that makes more sense to me than any other. I offer it here in…
I. Varlam Shalamov in Kolyma Tales describes his experience of the Gulag, where he spent more than a dozen of years. In a story titled The Life of Engineer Kipreev Shalamov reflects on the theme of hope in the life of a prisoner: “Hope always shackles the convict. Hope is…
Genesis 14:14 says that Abram mustered his trained men, “born in his house,” to rescue Lot, and gives their number as 318. It is clear that the precise number is provided for some reason, but what is it? S. Gevirtz notes that 318 is the sum of all the prime…
And he said to me, "What do you see?" And I answered, "I see a flying scroll; its length is twenty cubits and its width ten cubits" (Zechariah 5:2). Immediately following his vision of the outpouring of the Spirit upon the restoration community (4:1-14), Zechariah saw a flying scroll. The…
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Andrew Sullivan's Trumpacalyptic essay in New York doesn't persuade. The Constitutional system that Sullivan describes so well is more resilient than he thinks, and Trump more moderate, pragmatic, and changeable than he credits. But Sullivan's explanation of Trump's rise is spot on. On the one hand, there are the ongoing…
In an essay on “Two Theories of Modernity,” Charles Taylor distinguishes between cultural and a-cultural theories of modernization. The former type of theory is “one that characterizes the transformations that have issued in the modern West mainly in terms of the rise of a new culture. The contemporary Atlantic world…
First gays were oppressed by being excluded from marriage. Now they are oppressed for being confined to it. In her forthcoming Beyond Monogamy , Tulane's Mimi Schippers argues that we won't reach real sexual freedom until monogamy is cast into the dustbin. Gays and bisexuals and polysexuals of various sorts…
Richard Cross's 1999 Duns Scotus in the Great Medieval Thinkers series is an excellent, concise introduction to this most controverted of medieval theologians. It's dense, so is its subject. Cross spends a late chapter dealing with some central themes in Scotus's sacramental theology - his theory of sacramental causality, his…
The city that descends from heaven in Revelation 21:9-22:5 shines with the glory of God. She is a light to the nations: “nations shall walk by its light, and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory into it” (v. 24). That image provides a neat model of mission.…
In the introduction to Rhetoric and Kairos , editor Phillip Sipiora notes that “ kairos first appeared in the Iliad , where it denotes a vital or lethal place in the body, one that is particularly susceptible to injury and therefore necessitates special protection; kairos thus, initially, carries a spatial…
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