Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
After the identification of the recipients of his letter at the beginning of Revelation, John gives a benediction that resembles the benedictions of the Pauline letters. He pronounces grace/favor and peace, grace and favor that lead to peace, grace that leads to fullness and harmony that is the biblical definition…
Throughout the latter half of 1-2 Samuel, Saul and David are locked in hand-to-hand combat. It seems an unequal contest. All the heavy artillery is on Saul's side. To understand the full scope of the conflict, we need to back up to the beginning of the book. Prior to Saul's…
Last week, I lectured at Ostrog Academy in Ostrog, Ukraine, and at a pastors' conference in Kyiv. The latter was co-sponsored by Trinity House and the Alliance of Reformed Churches in Ukraine. I offer my impressions of Ukraine this morning at Firstthings.com .
Why do I bristle when I see someone with white wires hanging from his ears, flipping through what must be a million songs downloaded onto his iPod? No doubt, it’s the threat of the new. I've only recently begun carrying a cell phone, and now I hear tell of compact…
Judah is in terrible shape (Isaiah 57). Yahweh told Israel to worship Him only at the temple, but the people worship on every hill and under every green and leafy tree. He commanded them to worship Him alone, but they are devoted to many gods. Worshipers set up their beds…
Like any great writer, the Lord foreshadows late happenings in early happenings. Like many greater writers, the Lord ends where he begins, returning to a glorified Edenic city-sanctuary at the end of his cosmic story. The Lord writes with history, real people and events, not merely with words. But His…
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Laurence Michel, exploring the “Possibility of a Christian Tragedy,” suggests that the creation account of Genesis opens the possibility for a “tragic sense of life.” How? “To have a world imitative of the simple perfection of God one must have multiplicity and diversity of goods. Various evils and contraries will…
CS Lewis says in Pilgrim’s Regress : “Evil is fissiparous, and could never in a thousand eternities find any way to arrest its own reproduction. If it could, it could be no longer evil: for Form and Limit belong to the good.” But what then of a Good and Infinite…
In a chapter in Beyond Tragedy , Reinhold Niebuhr considers the relationship between Christianity and tragedy. He denies that Christianity is tragic: “The cross is not tragic but the resolution of tragedy.” In the course of his discussion he makes several intriguing points about the tragic outlook: 1) He highlights…
Simone Weil offered one of the most thorough-going Christian defenses of tragedy, though that defense comes at considerable cost to her orthodoxy. As Katherine Brueck points out in her study of Weil’s theory ( The Redemption of Tragedy ), Weil recognized that what was at stake in a discussion of…
Some more thoughts from Segal’s book: 1) He points out the optimism that gripped Athens in the Periclean period, an optimism about the ability of human LOGOS and NOMOS to stave off the savage potential of man’s PHUSIS. But that was short-lived: The Peloponnesian wars broke out, marked by several…
In his study of Sophocles, Tragedy and Civilization , Charles Segal points to several Greek terms that might be translated as “civilization” and that capture various aspects of civilized life: NOMOS = the established institutions, customs, and norms of a people POLITEIA = the form of government, especially the constitutional…
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