Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In my previous two posts, I looked at aspects of Psalms 93, 95, 96 and 98 that declare Yahweh, the divine King, to be the world’s own Creator. In my next post, I plan to argue that the creation theology of the sub-section constituted by Psalms 93-100 contributes to the…
Ethika Politika has published a fascinating interview within which the French Catholic philosopher Fabrice Hadjadj discusses his recent work on the subject of sexuality. While there are many points where our lines of reasoning as Protestants will sharply diverge from Hadjadj’s, there is also much that is deeply perceptive in…
For anyone in Shakespeare’s audience who knew the real story of Macbeth, his play must have been surprising. Shakespeare changed so many important details of the historical Macbeth’s life that had Raphael Holinshed, the main author of the most popular history of the British Isles in Shakespeare’s day — Holinshed…
I started looking at a sequence of psalms on divine Kingship (Psalms 93-100) in my last post, part of a series looking at the Old Testament’s witness to Yahweh’s exercise of absolute mastery over his cosmos. I am not trying to “prove” a doctrine of creation ex nihilo directly from…
Most of the time I believe that dread is wise, anxiety righteous, fear a holy thing. It sounds ridiculous, but bear with me. There are days when fear seems to be not only a rational response to my circumstances, but a moral duty. After all, being a grown-up means responsibility.…
Get the Psalm 36 Translation here Psalm 36 begins with several translation problems. First, the first word in the actual psalm, as it is found in the English text, is the word "oracle." This word also begins the second verse in the medieval Massoretic Hebrew text, which is our basic…
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In a short story called “The Fog-horn,” Ray Bradbury wrote of his most important prose-poems: “One day many years ago a man walked along and stood in the sound of the ocean on a cold sunless shore and said, ‘we need a voice to call across the water, to warn…
Steven Conn ( Americans Against the City ) thinks there’s a contradiction at the center of America’s attitude toward cities. Cities play a huge role in our economy and culture, because of their density of population and the possibilities this opens for public institutions and cultural spaces. Conn examines “two…
In his stimulating study of Augustine, Barth, and contemporary Trinitarian theology, Incarnational Realism , Travis Ables summarizes two tendencies of recent Trinitarian thought: Hegelian idealism and personalism. He sees both “as salutary in their intentions” but in danger of service “as an increasingly formalistic conceptual paradigm to serve idealist or…
Michael and his angels fight the dragon and his angels, and expel them from heaven (Revelation 12). Who is this Michael? Michael appears in Qumran texts, and in apocalyptic texts outside the canon. My focus here, though, is on the what the Bible itself says about Michael. Revelation 12 begins…
Anti-moderns often speak nostalgically of the “crowded universe” of yesterday, when the world wasn’t just matter in motion but full of fairies and sprites and whatnot. It’s a charming picture, but the reality of a crowded universe wasn’t necessarily a happy thing. Stephan Maul writes of ancient Mesopotamia: “If a…
Stephan Maul summarizes the ritual that an ancient Mesopotamian would have to go through to be released from the displeasure of the gods, which was communicated to the person by a bad omen (a barking dog, a growling cat, etc.). The key portion of the rite was played out before…
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