Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Place names become fraught with meaning by association with people and events. The name “Wittenberg” calls to mind Luther and the Reformation for Protestants and Catholics alike. Geneva has a wider range of associations, but the Reformation Wall, with its four main statues of William Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza,…
“…a mystery without a solution, a horror story without savagery, a nightmare in which all the watches stop at noonday…” The Bestial Gardens of Men Then they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!” (Luke 23:30) The following lines by Edgar Allan Poe,…
2 Samuel 11-12, which record David’s sin with Bathsheba and its aftermath, is structured chiastically: This arrangement highlights several things about the episode. It reinforces what is obvious from even a casual reading, that the transition in the story occurs with Nathan’s confrontation of David’s sin and David’s confession. Up…
Medieval bestiaries are packed with quaintly inaccurate information about animals, birds, and other created things. Foxes and snakes are devilish critters; stags, pelicans and elephants are Christlike in their various ways. Of course, the medievals picked this up from the Bible, where bestiary observations are fairly common. “Go to the…
What do Reformational Catholicism and craft beer have in common? The question seems to beg for a punchline. Better yet, it would be pretty good clickbait for an article on Katharina von Bora’s “spirited” contribution that helped spark the Protestant Reformation. Well, this is no joke and I am certainly…
Suffering Defined Suffering happens. We witness it all around us and experience it in our lives. It often comes from forces beyond our control. Suffering is inscrutable; it strikes unexpectedly, on a bright summer day or a cold winter night. We lament and are bewildered by suffering. But we are…
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Martyrs share in Jesus' suffering and death. Martyrs also come to life as Jesus did. This is what John calls the “first resurrection” (Revelation 20:5). That is the argument presented by GB Caird ( Revelation of St. John the Divine , 255). Jesus' resurrection, he argues, “had a double sequel,…
In a lively exchange with Eugene McCarraher , John Milbank summarizes his views on democracy. Like Chesterton, he is a defender of the democracy of the dead, and he insists that this is not simply “a defense of the given and an assault on the present.” That is, he claims,…
“Despite the central role which the priesthood played in Israel's life and worship,” writes Nicholas Haydock ( The Theology of the Levitical Priesthood ), it has only a small role in “the majority of Old Testament theologies” (xii). This neglect is partly due to the influence of Wellhausen's documentary thesis,…
There are a number of “seconds” in the book of Revelation. References to the “second death” surround the book (2:11; 20:6, 14; 21:8), and there is a second seal (6:3), a second woe (11:14), and several second angels (8:8; 14:8; 16:3). The living creatures are enumerated, the lion first, the…
In his introduction to Scott Cairns's collection, Slow Pilgrim , Gregory Wolfe recounts Cairns's development as a poet. He grew up “within a powerful religious subculture that splits the spirit off from the letter, reducing faith to didactic legalism. These fellow religionists of his youth loved nothing better than to…
JT Fraser begins one of his essays in Time and Time Again with this lovely sketch of a musical cosmology: “The noble English art of change ringing consists of the ringing of a set of bells of different pitches, according to sequences that follow stable mathematical patterns. A set of…
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