Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
We lost Crimea. That is very clear. Putin proved he was not lying when he said he would place women and children ahead of his soldiers to storm Ukrainian military bases. Russian soldiers did exactly that with women (some who volunteered and some who were forced). Russia now occupies all…
Sound is an indicator of life and energy. “Sound signals the present use of power, since sound must be in active production to exist at all.” Things don’t have to be alive to make themselves visible, and “a primitive hunter can see, feel, smell, and taste an elephant when the…
In the most famous section of his best-known novel, Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov brings forward his case against God. He opens with a horrific litany of outrages against children. Turkish soldiers make a baby laugh and then shoot a pistol into his face. A little girl is beaten, thrashed, kicked by…
At the heart of Esther Lightcap Meek's splendid Little Manual for Knowing is a concept she picked up from Michael Polanyi, "subsidiary-focal integration." The concept begins from the insight that all our knowing, all our experience, is double. We focus on something, but we are capable of "indwelling" that focal…
Jesus promises the overcomers of Pergamum "hidden manna" and a "white stone." The hidden manna is often linked with the manna stashed away in the ark of the covenant. The white stone has proved more elusive. Exodus tells us that manna was white (Exodus 16:31) and like bdellium (Numbers 11:7),…
Leviticus 23 begins with a reference to “Yahweh’s appointed times” ( mo’ade-YHWH ). Mo’ed is the common term for the feasts of Israel. A few dimensions to this term. First, it means “appointed time” or “designated time.” It is a time set by Yahweh. Yahweh has claimed certain times as…
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I magine, Peter Harrison suggests at the beginning of The Territories of Science and Religion , a historian who claimed to have discovered evidence of a war between Israel and Egypt that took place in 1600 AD. We’d be justifiably skeptical, and the evidence could be refuted with a swipe…
I t’s a truism of Old Testament studies that “poverty” in the Bible isn’t merely an economic condition. To be poor is not only to lack property and tangible wealth. It connotes deprivation in a wider sense. Psalm 10 illustrates the point. The wicked who does not believe in God…
B efore Joshua begins the battle at Jericho, he encounters “a man” with a sword who identifies himself as “the captain of the host of Yahweh” (Joshua 5:13-15). It’s a familiar scene, echoing the moment when Abraham encountered three men at his tent (Genesis 18:2). Abraham “lifted up his eyes…
A llison Benedikt doesn’t know me, but she thinks I’m a bad person. Not “ murderer bad,” mind you. Just “ruining-one-of-our-nation’s-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what’s-best-for-your-kid” bad. That kind of bad, which is “pretty bad.” I’m a bad person because I’ve never sent my kids to public school. My wife and I home-schooled all of…
S ince at least the early 20th century, commentators have claimed that the messages to the seven churches in Revelation 2–3 are packed with local allusions that the recipients would have recognized (see, for instance, W.M. Ramsay, The Letters to the Seven Churches ). Craig Koester ( Revelation ) doesn’t…
I n The Clash of Gods (6-8), Thomas Mathewes describes the “staggering” revolution that took place in late antiquity when Christianity overthrew pagan art: In effect, a highly nuanced visual language that had been developed over the course of a thousand years to express man's sense of cosmic order, to…
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