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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If the writer must be open to the manifestation of God in “what-is,” she must begin with the senses. Following Aquinas, Flannery O'Connor writes, “The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where human perception begins. He appeals through the senses, and you cannot…
C. E. Douglas's 1915 study of Revelation, The Mystery of the Kingdom , is an eccentric work in a number of ways, but for just that reason highly stimulating, provocative of insight. He rejects, for instance, both the “standard” dating of the book in the reign of Domitian (based on…
Jesus condemned the temple as a “den of thieves.” He was quoting Jeremiah, who said that the Jews of his time were using the temple as a “safe house” where they could store and enjoy their ill-gotten gains. The temple was not where their thieving took place, but their hideout.…
Yahweh is the “Holy One of Israel” ( qedosh yisrael ). It is a name used almost exclusively in Isaiah. It appears once in Kings (2 Kings 19:22), three times in the Psalms (71:22; 78:41; 89:18), a couple of times in Jeremiah. Isaiah uses the name twenty-five times (significant? 2…
Israelite kings were not to be like kings of the nations (Deuteronomy 17). Kings from the nations multiplied wealth and lived in luxury; they built military machines to conquer their neighbors; they kept harems full of princesses, wives and concubines that represented political alliances. Israel's kings were to be different…
Blame it on Marburg. The 1529 Colloquy at Marburg attempted to reconcile Lutherans and Zwinglians on the doctrine of the real presence, and was nearly able to achieve its aim. To Luther's surprise, the Zwinglian party agreed with fourteen of his fifteen propositions, and even conceded most of what was…
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