Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
My copy of Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1976: not so new, really) defines obscene as (1) "disgusting to the senses; repulsive" and (2) "abhorrent to morality or virtue; specif: designed to incite lust or depravity." Definitions such as this serve a useful purpose only when there is agreement on what…
An Overview Here begins a series of studies in the Abomination of Desolation, or Desolating Sacrilege. This month and next I shall set out an overview of what I regard as the best interpretation of the phenomenon. Later essays will look at it in more detail. (The original form of…
29. There are three things that are stately in their march, Even four that are stately when they walk: 30. The lion is mighty among beasts And does not turn back before any, 31. The strutting cock, The male goat, And a king with his army around him. 32. If…
We have seen that it is likely that the Artaxerxes of Ezra-Nehemiah is the same as Darius the Great. If this solution be correct, and I think it is, possibly there is another problem in Ezra that can be resolved by it. In Ezra 4:6 we are told that "in…
Czech novelist Milan Kundera, though hardly a household name in the English-speaking world, has achieved a certain notoriety in America in recent years, largely on the strength of the English translation and film version of his novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. 1 The Unbearable Lightness of Being — the…
24. Four things are small on the earth, But they are exceedingly wise; 25. The ants are not a strong folk, But they prepare their food in the summer; 26. The coneys are not a mighty folk, Yet they make their houses in the rocks; 27. The locusts have no…
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Here are some highlights of Marjorie Garber’s essay on Richard III in Shakespeare After All . 1) Garber suggests that Richard is the “first fully realized and psychologically conceived character” in Shakespeare’s plays. Richard’s character is fully realized because he is complex, protean, chameleon and Machiavellian (cf. 3 Henry VI…
Thomas Brodie ( Genesis As Dialogue ) argues that "Genesis consists of twenty-six diptychs. Building on older insights that several Genesis texts occur in pairs and that Genesis is somehow binary or dialogical, this study makes a basic observation: The entire book is composed of diptychs—accounts which, like some paintings,…
John Wilders's The Lost Garden attempts to discern the unified concept of the human condition that lies behind Shakespeare's English and Roman history plays. He finds the key in the Christian doctrine of sin: The "discrepancy between an ideal past and a painful present, between the hopeful intentions of Shakespeare's…
President Trump started calling his Attorney General Jeff Sessions “beleaguered” months ago. Now it’s actually true. Trump made it true. Republican leaders are plotting with Trump to replace Sessions after the mid-term elections. Jerry Falwell, Jr ., has raised questions about the sincerity of Sessions’s commitment to Trump’s agenda. “He’s…
News reports of the recent revelations about the sex scandals in the Catholic church still claim that the crisis is about "pedophilia." It's not, as Philip Jenkins pointed out more than twenty years ago ( Pedophiles and Priests ). The alliterative "pedophile priests" is rhetorically punchy but, Jenkins argued, misleading:…
My wife recently hung a small painting in the master bathroom. I bought the painting some years ago during a trip to Florida. In slightly impressionistic style, it depicts a rowboat tied to a dilapidated dock. Behind the boat the sea stretches out until it meets the graying sky. When…
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