Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Place names become fraught with meaning by association with people and events. The name “Wittenberg” calls to mind Luther and the Reformation for Protestants and Catholics alike. Geneva has a wider range of associations, but the Reformation Wall, with its four main statues of William Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza,…
“…a mystery without a solution, a horror story without savagery, a nightmare in which all the watches stop at noonday…” The Bestial Gardens of Men Then they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!” (Luke 23:30) The following lines by Edgar Allan Poe,…
2 Samuel 11-12, which record David’s sin with Bathsheba and its aftermath, is structured chiastically: This arrangement highlights several things about the episode. It reinforces what is obvious from even a casual reading, that the transition in the story occurs with Nathan’s confrontation of David’s sin and David’s confession. Up…
Medieval bestiaries are packed with quaintly inaccurate information about animals, birds, and other created things. Foxes and snakes are devilish critters; stags, pelicans and elephants are Christlike in their various ways. Of course, the medievals picked this up from the Bible, where bestiary observations are fairly common. “Go to the…
What do Reformational Catholicism and craft beer have in common? The question seems to beg for a punchline. Better yet, it would be pretty good clickbait for an article on Katharina von Bora’s “spirited” contribution that helped spark the Protestant Reformation. Well, this is no joke and I am certainly…
Suffering Defined Suffering happens. We witness it all around us and experience it in our lives. It often comes from forces beyond our control. Suffering is inscrutable; it strikes unexpectedly, on a bright summer day or a cold winter night. We lament and are bewildered by suffering. But we are…
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K risten Thompson devotes several pages of her Apocalyptic Dread , a study of apocalyptic in contemporary film, analyzing Spielberg's 2005 remake of War of the Worlds . She points to the “film’s extensive references to 9/11 and terrorism as the new marker of dread in the twenty-first century.” She…
F elecia Wright McDuffie's To Our Bodies Turn We Then is a study of Donne's understanding of the body as “word and sacrament.” Drawing from Donne's poetry, sermons, and prose writing, she summarizes Donne's view of the human body as created, fallen, redeemed, and recreated. All along the way, McDuffie…
P utting “film noir ” and “musical” in the same sentence may seem absurd. If any film genre is sunlight and sentiment, seething with clappy optimism, it's the musical. And noir is something different. Sheri Biesen's Music in the Shadows shows that the two forms have cohabited for decades: “The…
W ho teaches your U.S.A. children how to choose their temple? What to love enough not to think two times?” These questions are posed in the broken English of Remy Maranthe, one of the Wheelchair Assassins who populate David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest . After Canada is forced into the…
C J Labuschagne points out in his Numerical Secrets of the Bible that “Exod 39:32–43 tells how the Tabernacle with all its equipment was presented to Moses, who inspected all the work and saw that the craftsmen had done their work according to the command of the Lord, and he…
C J Labuschagne ( Numerical Secrets of the Bible ) highlights the use of 11-fold literary patterns in the Pentateuch. The creation account, for instance, uses the formula “and God said” eleven times, concluding with the creation of Eve: “This coherence is found also in the eleventh divine utterance in…
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