Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
It is a well-known movie trope, the sports car drives up, a stiletto-heeled starlet steps out and the camera follows her leg up the prodigious slit of her dress, then it takes in the rest of her figure before settling on her face, usually primed and puckered for some pro-feminist…
The “personalist” understanding of the Trinity, articulated most influentially in the work of John Zizioulas, has fallen on hard times. Recent scholars have attacked Zizioulas’s idea that Cappadocian Trinitarianism represented an ontological revolution, hammering again and again the distinction between divine and human personhood. Michel Barnes’s conclusion is the most…
I sit here in my office and poke around on a keyboard that is not even physically connected to my laptop and characters appear on a screen. I have a phone in my pocket through which I talk to someone around the world, send a text message, and to which…
I want to give a pep talk. Nothing fancy, nothing clever. Jesus makes some astounding promises in Luke 11. I want to clear out the clutter and convince you to believe Him and to act on it. The chapter begins with Jesus praying and teaching His disciples to pray by…
Eleonore Stump in her book Wandering in Darkness invites us to re-read the story of Lazarus (John 11) from Mary’s perspective. Stump argues that the story of Lazarus is a story of Mary, since both Lazarus and Martha are identified by their relationship with Mary. The true ending of the…
In his introduction to The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift in Honor of James B. Jordan , Peter Leithart says this about him: “Jordan is an unclassifiable thinker because he is an unclassifiable person . . . he closes his eyes in ecstasy listening to Messiaen or Rachmaninoff . .…
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The Servant comes, and the arm of the Lord is revealed (Isaiah 53:1). The Servant’s face and form are marred, stricken, pierced, crushed, chastened, scourged. It looks like the body that’s already there, the body of Israel: “Where will you be stricken again, as you continue in rebellion? The whole…
According to the NASB, Isaiah 53 says that the Servant has “no stately form ( to’ad ) or majesty ( hadar ) that we should look upon Him, nor appearance ( mar’eh ) that we should desire ( chamad ) Him” (v. 2). Two of those three terms appeared at…
Yahweh’s Servant prospers (or “deals prudently”), and so is raised, lifted, exalted greatly (Isaiah 52:13). But that exaltation is paradoxical, surprising, since the Servant that is lifted up is mangled and marred more than any of the sons of Adam (v. 14). The word translated as “astonished” ( shamem )…
The New Testament says several times that there is a day of accounting coming when all will be judged according to their deeds (Matthew 16:27; Romans 2:6; 2 Corinthians 5:10). In Romans 2 especially, this is an individual accounting: God “will render to every man according to his deeds” (Paul…
Self-obsessed egoism is not, Zizek argues ( Violence: Six Sideways Reflections ), the essence of evil, and the “true opposite of egotist self-love is not altruism, a concern for the common good, but envy, ressentiment , which makes me act against my own interest.” The true evil is (citing Freud)…
We are often told that we live in a “post-political” era or an era of “bio-politics.” Slavoj Zizek ( Violence: Six Sideways Reflections , 40-2) defines the post-political as “a politics which claims to leave behind old ideological struggles and instead focus on expert management and administration” and “bio-politics” as…
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