Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If 1 Chronicles were a movie, it would begin with two hours and forty-five minutes of credits: Name after name scrolling across the screen, most of them (as far as we’re concerned) obscurities and nonentities and unknowns, forgotten fathers and sons and mighty men; all the bit players in the…
Let me locate myself. I’m sitting on a sand dune, three hundred feet above the blue-as-a-swimmer-crab water of Lake Michigan. I’m so high above the surface that the sound of the waves flopping onto the beach is as quiet as wind easing through a screen door. Around me are several…
My title is too grand. What I offer here falls far short of a full description of poetry. I barely offer a definition. A more accurate title would be “Axioms and Suspicions About Poetry.” Axioms first. I have three of them. The first is the closest I can come to…
In his book In Defense of Food Michael Pollan does just what the title suggests, he defends food. Pollan argues that the presupposition behind modern food science, or “nutritionism” as he calls it, is that humans don’t need food, they need nutrients. To be sure, modern science is not yet…
The early church took possession of the Roman Empire within a few centuries, largely because she ministered sacrificially in word and deed. The church provided services and care that the empire and pagan religions could not in times of crisis. The faithful witness of those serving Christians bore great fruit…
My title, “The Original Murder” will be understood by many readers, if not almost all, to refer to Cain’s murder of Abel, but I have in mind the very first murder, the one which Jesus pointed to when He said that Satan was a murderer “from the beginning.” “You are…
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Wells quotes from British sociologist Anthony Giddens , who argues that postmodernism is not so much a rejection of modern foundationalism as “unmasking what has been hidden in the modern.” In classic Enlightenment foundationalism, reason is self-grounded, and faith in reason is a dogmatic faith. For consistency’s sake, Enlightenment thinkers…
Like many of David Wells ‘s books, I’ve find his recent Above All Earthly Pow’rs simultaneously bracing, stimulating, and frustrating. Wells examines the consequences of the confluence of two main cultural trends - the postmodern ethos and the increasingly pluralistic religious situation of the West. He makes many good points:…
Moses is mentioned 10 times in Kings, and there are some tantalizing connections with the 10 Words that Moses delivered to Israel. For instance: 1. 1 Kings 2:3: David exhorts Solomon to guard the Lord’s commandments and walk in his ways, using a 7fold description of the law. This is…
In his 1607 treatise, Idea of Painters, Sculptors, and Architects , the painter Federigo Zuccaro claimed that human being was creative being: “Because of His goodness and to show in a small replica the excellence of his divine art, [God] having created man in His image and likeness with respect…
William Bouwsma points out in his book on the “waning of the Renaissance” that the Renaissance challenged what he calls the “traditional conception of the self,” in which reason sits at the top of a hierarchy of discrete faculties, including will, passions, and body. The challenge to this conception during…
John Frame has a typically gracious though critical review of Brian McLaren ‘s Generous Orthodoxy in the current issue of Reformation and Revival Journal. Frame appreciates a number of the concerns that animate McLaren (learning from other Christian traditions, the missional concept of the church, a hermeneutic of love, among…
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