Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Creationism is debated widely in the US, especially when it comes to teaching creation as an alternative theory of origins in public schools. Every few months, there’s another poll showing that many Americans still believe Ussher’s claim that the world was created around 4000 BC, which always elicits a contemptuous…
Walker Percy died in 1990, but his six published novels and his collections of essays are more relevant than when he wrote them. Percy was an American Dostoevsky, and that was no accident. “The European novels,” he says in a 1974 interview, “are more philosophical, more novels of ideas.” Dostoevsky,…
The Spirit is God’s agent for renewing the creation, for restoring bonds between nations, for knitting together people into the body of Christ. The Spirit is the renewer of the world, and the bond of all relations. That means that if you want your family to be knit together, if…
In their basic physical sense , the verbs translated as "persecute" in the Bible mean “chase” or “pursue,” and that fits the context quite naturally. As Pharaoh “pursued” (LXX, dioko ; Heb. radaph ) Israel into the wilderness, for example, so the dragon chases the woman back to her place…
Seng-Kong Tan’s Fullness Received and Returned is a densely argued, thoroughly researched, contextually sensitive study of participation in the soteriology of Jonathan Edwards. Along the way, Tan deals with many of the central themes in Edwards’s theology. As with many recent studies of Edwards, Tan’s monograph demonstrates both Edwards’s creativity…
The title of James Joyce’s first novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man indicates that it is a bildungsroman , a story of formation that describes the formative experiences of a poet who aspires to artistic greatness. The education described is Joyce’s own. The novel recounts the failing…
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A s a techno-lagger, I came late to the smart phone world. Every sentient adult who has used a phone over the past decade saw everything I’m seeing long ago. Still, it might be worth putting it to writing. Smart phones and other sorts of communication devices have of course…
In his commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Romans (60-1), Peter Stuhlmacher argues that Paul’s use of hilasterion in Romans 3:25 refers not to a “propitiation” but to a “place” of atonement. The import is that Jesus’ death radically alters the terrain of atonement. Stuhlmacher writes that through Christ’s redemption…
In his essay in The Epistle to the Hebrews and Christian Theology , Nehemia Polen explores what light the letter to Hebrews throws on the purposes and rituals of Leviticus. Contrary to many popular understanding, the focus of Leviticus is not forgiveness, but rather has to do with the maintenance…
Emil Brunner acknowledges that “The message of the Cross is the central mystery of the scriptural Gospel.” In his view, it “is not the task of theology to explain these mysteries: for if explanation were possible these mysteries would only be fortuitous mysteries, and thus not real and divine.” But…
PT Forsyth responds to the charge that the church is slow to accomplish her mission because of her unfaithfulness with this neat inversion ( Work of Christ , 21): “Do you really find that the deeper you get into Christ and the meaning of His demands Christianity spreads faster in…
Teju Cole pays tribute to Krzysztof Kie?lowski’s 1996 film Red in the December 22 issue of The New Yorker . The film tells a small, quiet tale, a film of “hushed intensity” and conveys “the sense of inner workings not fully grasped.” A woman in Geneva, Valentine, runs over a…
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