Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Stories, frankly all human stories are practically always about one thing aren’t they? Death. The inevitability of death. . . . “There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that happens to man is ever natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must…
Matthew is organized around 5 discourses, which trace out the history of Jesus as a recapitulation of the history of God and Israel in the Old Testament. Jesus first speaks as a new Moses, instructing His disciples on a mountain about a righteousness that surpasses the righteousness of the scribes…
The fall of the Sethites in Genesis 6 is the third fall of mankind, or the third degree of Adam’s original fall. Adam sinned in a Garden against his Father by stealing something he was supposed to wait to obtain. (“Every tree shall be food for you” Genesis 1:29.) Cain…
The recent fantasy film Noah and a slightly related blog comment by my friend Douglas Wilson have stirred up again the question of whether the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 who married the “daughters of men” were fallen angels or the priestly line of Seth. Doug argues for angels,…
The prophecy of Jude concerns apostasy. An illustration of apostasy and its consequences is found in verse 6, which the New American Standard Bible translates this way: "And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for…
At His death, Jesus is surrounded by a Roman centurion and his cohort of Gentile solders. Matthew doesn't say that any disciples are there. But women are, and so is Joseph of Arimathea, identified as a “disciple” but, as John tells us, a “secret disciple for fear of the Jews,”…
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Revelation uses the verb “descend” ( katabaino ) ten times, often with the specification that something descends “from heaven.” Cities come down from the sky, and angels, and dragons, and fire. The ten uses of the verb are in a fairly neat chiastic pattern: A. New Jerusalem will descend, 3:12…
More grist for the discussion of Protestantism and writing, taken from my review of Lori Branch, Rituals of Spontaneity . See the whole review here . Focusing on English literary culture and religion, Branch examines the formation of an “ideology of spontaneity” from the Reformation attacks on ritual through Puritan…
“We must continue to develop nonmythological narratives that synthesize and interpret our experience. These narratives must be based on the facts as we currently know them,” argues Scott Gustafson in At the Altar of Wall Street . He thinks Marx and Schumpeter offer some coordinates for a “demythologizing” of economics…
What does Trump do if he loses the Iowa caucuses today? asks Michael Kruse over at Politico . Kruse says that he will do what he always does: “He will deny and distort and belittle his critics and change the subject. He will say that he won.” Paul Holmes, who…
Twice in Revelation, John sees a rider on a white horse. The first comes in response to a call from the lion cherub and the Lamb's opening of the first seal (Revelation 6:1-2). He is alone, has a bow and receives a crown as he goes out conquering and to…
My two-part essay on why Protestants can't write got a lot more attention last week than it did when first published in Credenda/Agenda . Clarifications are in order. Behind the bluster, bombast, and hyperbole of the essay lie an assumption, an assertion, and an argument. The assumption is that liturgy…
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