Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Raising children in a world that is increasingly rebellious against God-given gender is quite a challenge. I believe that every generation has their own unique challenges to face, and LGBTQ is ours. It is the movement that steals our terminology (love, kindness, community) and our symbol of promise (the rainbow)…
While there are many tricky verses in the Bible, it’s clear that some of them were never intended to give us so much trouble. Paul’s mysterious mention of the “restrainer” in 2 Thessalonians 2 is a perfect example, but perhaps we have been looking at it the wrong way. Reading…
A common assumption of those most critical of “Christian nationalism” is that such a conception is inherently racist and opposed to the universal nature of the Christian faith. Many argue that Christian nationalism undermines a catholic sensibility by tethering Christianity to the particularities of the nation, and usually to a…
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul speaks of those who “trouble” their congregations: “[T]here are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ” (1:7). 1 The word “trouble” caught my attention here, because in 1 Kings 18:17, King Ahab refers to Elijah the prophet as…
Many Christians find themselves working for businesses or corporations that encourage compliance with the moral revolution. Perhaps their company wants them to participate in gay pride month. Perhaps they require employees to use the preferred gender pronouns of their co-workers. Or maybe they require them to sign a statement affirming…
“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children.” – Matthew 11:18-19 When conservative…
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Analyzing Rodney Stark’s treatment of the virgin birth of Jesus in his review of Stark’s latest book, The Victory of Reason (TNR January 6, 2006), Alan Wolfe writes, “Mary’s virgin birth has what [Charles] Freeman calls a ‘shaky’ scriptural basis, given that the Gospels mention her siblings and that one…
INTRODUCTION Christians usually think of the book of 1-2 Kings as “historical,” and Jews have long classified it as “prophetic.” For Christians, 1-2 Kings is above all about the gospel. FORMER PROPHET Because the Jewish classification of Kings may be unfamiliar, we should spend a bit of time examining it.…
In his history of Russian culture, James Billington notes the influence of Shakespeare’s Hamlet on modern Russian thought and drama. It was “one of the first plays to be regularly performed on the Russian stage,” so that “Hamlet became a kind of testing ground for the Russian critical imagination.” The…
Everyone with a more than elementary understanding of how language works knows that words can have different meanings in different contexts. The more intriguing phenomenon, and one exploited by poets and novelists, is that a word can have a different meaning, or a very different referent in a new context,…
Perhaps we should not call it “intertextuality,” but something like intertextuality is necessary to textual meaning, even at the most basic levels. You cannot read a single sentence without bringing some knowledge of the language to bear on the text. The reader must have information from outside the text if…
The inherently inter-textual character of textual meaning appears to be a reflex of Trinitarian relations. To wit: Each person of the Triune God is God Himself. As the Athanasian creed said, The Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God; yet there are not three gods but…
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