Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Paul writes to Jews, “You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?” (Romans 2:22b) The English translation “rob temples” makes readers think of pagan temples. There was only one Temple for Israel, so robbing more than one would indicate other temples are in view. And if the Jews wanted to…
Two offerings Humanity’s first vocation involves guarding and serving the trees that emerge from the ground (Genesis 2:15). God provides these trees to humanity for food. A serpent appears and tempts the couple to eat from a special forbidden tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Humanity…
At the outset of the Torah (as Christians understand it), a triune God creates the heavens and earth over the course of a seven-day week. Why? What’s the connection between the three and the seven? Could a triune God have created the world over any period of time he chose?…
How relevant to the modern reader are the flying axe head of Deuteronomy 19:5 and the roof parapet of Deuteronomy 22:8? Indeed, how relevant were they to the daily lives of Israelites thirty-five hundred years ago? Suppose that accidental falls from rooftops were exceedingly uncommon in ancient Israel, or that…
1 For most of my life, the standing of the American church as a source of national social and political order was measured by reports from the front of the so-called “culture wars.” 2 Memory brings to mind battles over feminism and the ERA, so-called gay rights, the breakdown of…
But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel…’ And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the…
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Four things puzzle Agur the son of Jakeh, elusive author of Proverbs 30: eagles in the sky, serpents on rocks, ships on the sea, and “the way of a man with a maid” (v. 19). Agur is thinking of the mysteries of attraction and passion. There are plenty of puzzles…
Paul Veyne, When Our World Became Christian, 312-394 (trans. Janet Lloyd; Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2010). Paperback, 248 pages; $24.95. Paul Veyne is one of France’s leading classical scholars, an Honorary Professor at the College de France and author of recognized classics like Bread and Circuses and Did the Greeks Believe…
Doug Jones won a "stunning" victory in the Alabama Senate race. It was a stinging "rebuke" to Trump. Those were the headlines following the raucous Alabama Senate runoff on Tuesday. Jones is the first Democratic Senator in Alabama for a quarter century, and the first Democrat elected in a state-wide…
Augustine, Paula Fredriksen found ( Augustine and the Jews ), radically revised the common Christian views on the Old Testament and Judaism, embodied in the adversus Iudaeos tradition that stretched back to Justin’s treatises against Trypho the Jew. It started with a public debate with the Manichean Fortunatus. Though he…
Post-liberal movements in Europe are often denounced as "fascist," "racist," or "far-right." Timothy Less disputes this. Populist parties - "France’s National Front, the Alternative for Germany, the Danish People’s Party, Poland’s Law and Justice, Hungary’s Fidesz and the Austrian Freedom Party" - usually cut across existing left-right divides. He concedes…
Why would God bring the Savior into the world through a female virgin? Anselm offers some answers ( Cur Deus Homo , 323-4): "is extremely appropriate that, just as the sin of mankind and the cause of our damnation originated from a woman, correspondingly the medicine of sin and the…
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