Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I was still a high school student the first time I read Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, but I will never forget the powerful impact the book had on me. Of course, as a second year student, I did not fully digest the book. In spite of subsequent readings, I…
Crises force questions of identity. Identities may remain assumed until some event, or series of events, challenge what may have been taken for granted. The search for identity is an anxious one precisely because it tends to happen in times of upheaval and uncertainty. In his recent book, Orthoxox Anglican…
Peter Leithart recently wrote a fascinating short piece about the Half Shekel Temple Tax as an atonement. Leithart argues three main points. First that the Sanctuary Shekel was heavier, i.e., more valuable than the everyday shekel. Second, he offers some analysis about the order of magnitude of the purchasing power…
There is no denial from the careful reader that 1 Samuel 24 and 26 are telling the same story. Perhaps we should say, virtually the same story. But that the stories are cut from the same cloth is undeniable. What we have over these three chapters—1 Samuel 24-26—is a very…
In his novel That Hideous Strength , C.S. Lewis is able to masterfully illustrate in narrative form so many of his insights about the subversive dangers of Leftist political dogma to Christian civilization. Perceptive essays from Lewis like “The Abolition of Man” and “The Inner Ring” are fleshed out in…
At a very practical level, the Evangelical Church has been injected with counterfeit spiritualities. We are a people looking for a city, whose builder may only be in office for four years. Our temptation to veer to the side of the temporal is striking in our day, especially as the…
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One of the remarkable insights of Mira Balberg’s remarkable book on Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature is the contrast she draws between biblical and rabbinic notions of impurity. For biblical writers, she says, “the only participants in the impurity system, apart from the primary sources of impurity,…
John is told to prophesy. Then he is given a “reed like a rod” and told to measure. Which is it - prophesy or measure? And if the former, why these tools? For starters, we can link this to the scene of measuring that is found in Ezekiel. John has…
Paul’s offers this description of his experience at the end of Galatians 2: He died to the law. Immediately he adds that he himself was crucified with Christ, so it seems that he died to the law when he was crucified with Christ (whenever that was). Yet though he died…
According to Paul, the baptized are clothed with Christ (Galatians 3:27). In baptism, all the baptized are joined in “one” in Christ Jesus. We can read backwards in Galatians 3 to see what that means. The “one” is the “one seed” of Abraham (3:16). We might follow NT Wright in…
Like her other books, Diane Ackerman’s The Human Age is like a long, informative conversation with a witty woman who has been everywhere, done everything, and talked to everyone who has something interesting to say. Given the environmental concerns that inspired this book, The Human Age is somewhat more polemical…
We think of other people as being, well, other , outside. Others might have some effects on the outer shell of the self, but not the hard core of me . At the very least, my physical self is my own. Aristotle might have predicted that this isn’t true. And…
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