Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Figure: Literary structure of the Garden narrative The Garden narrative describes God forming the adam , resting him in his presence, then provisioning for his appetites of food, vocation, and mate. It continues to describe a snake, the introduction of death, and humanity's expulsion from the garden. The pages of…
I’ve spent the last few years studying the theology of St. Irenaeus (d. circ. 200ad). In particular, I’ve been gripped by the way that Irenaeus consistently resisted the anti-body emphasis that emerged in later Christian theology. His eschatology is remarkably focused on the resurrection of the body, and the renewal…
Details of Jesus in Exodus 1:22-2:25 Although there are a great many Christ-types in the Old Testament, it is hard to overplay the obviousness of some that seem to necessarily rise to the top before others. One of these is Isaac, with his near sacrifice by his own father after…
What can we say about Cain's wicked sanctuary-city of Enoch? First that it was built with a brother's blood as its cornerstone. The Church is also built such, for Jesus was the younger brother of the whole Adamic race, slain by that company of older brothers because they hated Him.…
In Genesis 2:9 the ground brought forth trees good for food, delightful to view, and in two cases, life-giving or rule-bestowing. Adam, made of the ground (2:7), would by implication bring forth new trees, and thus trees and plants are among the symbols for human beings throughout the Bible. The…
One of the must fundamental teachings of the Bible and of the Christian religion is that man does not have life in himself. Man must get life from outside of himself, in order to maintain his life. The way this is done is through eating and drinking. Apart from life,…
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M ary Eberstadt doesn't believe we're in a war of the religious v. the secular. In an adapted excerpt from her newly-released It's Dangerous To Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies , she argues that the battle is between “competing faiths: one in the Good Book, and the other in…
I an Morris puts the discontent with Western elites, reflected most dramatically in Britain's departure from the E.U., in a larger historical perspective. “Throughout history, when things have gone wrong, people have blamed their leaders,” Morris writes. “In the West, things are now going wrong more than they used to,…
I n his long-anticipated and dramatically-completed (read the Preface) Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels , Richard B. Hays devotes a few pages to the parable of the vineyard as recounted in Mark 12. He observes, as every commentator does, that Jesus is the son who is finally sent to…
P lace, writes Robert Pogue Harrison ( The Dominion of the Dead ), is established by a hic jacet : “here lies” the body of my ancestors. To this the gospel poses a direction challenge: When the women show up at the tomb of Jesus, angels tell them hic non…
D on't participate in ( sugkoinoneo ) darkness, Paul says (Ephesians 5:11). Communion with darkness is fruitless, sterile ( akarpos ). Instead of communing with the works of darkness, instead of joining them in one dead flesh, we are to “expose” the works of darkness. Elegcho , “expose,” can also…
I n an essay on “The Evangelical Subversion of Myth,” René Girard examines Matthew 23:27, Jesus's comparison of the Pharisees to whited sepulchers, and Jesus's condemnation of the Pharisees who are sons of those who kill the prophets. On the last passage, Girard cleverly observes that the Pharisees' effort to…
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