Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Hearing, Seeing, and History God is Word, not picture. He speaks, but He is not visible in Himself. Thus, God initiates history through language. He speaks the world into existence, and speaks to us to bring us out of formlessness and emptiness into the fullness of being His Bride. Similarly,…
The consensus of modern critical scholarship is that the book assigned to Isaiah was in fact composed by several different hands. "Deutero-Isaiah" supposedly begins with Isaiah 40:1. There are many good reasons for rejecting this conclusion. Among these, the narrative pattern of chapters 36-39 is a neglected piece of evidence.…
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy has pointed out throughout his many fascinating and occasionally quixotic writings and lectures that human life exists in four directions. These four directions are inward, outward, backward, and forward. In this article I want to explore these as they relate to the work of the Church. Each of…
14. Joseph and Judah Genesis 38 tells us about Judah’s sons and grandsons, and if we try to get these events into the time before the descent of the Hebrews into Goshen, it is very difficult to do so. But this passage is almost certainly dischronologized. Thematically Genesis 38 is…
From time to time I am asked what is good SF and fantasy that teenagers in Christian and home schools might enjoy. The following brief discussion is my answer that question. I’ve tried to point out authors and stories that are not widely known, and therefore have set aside G.…
"And many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awaken, some to life everlasting and others to disgrace, to contempt everlasting." This verse is often cited as proof that there was a belief in the resurrection of the body in the Old Testament times. In fact,…
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Deuteronomy 6 is the closest thing the Old Testament has to a confession of faith: “Hear, O Israel, Yahweh your God, Yahweh is one” (v. 4). That isn't merely a “doctrinal” confession. The text immediately goes on to exhort those who confess the one God to love that one God…
The land of promise is not a land like Egypt, and when Moses describes the differences between them he focuses on hydraulics. Egypt draws its water from below, pumped with a foot pump from the Nile. Canaan, though, lives off heavenly rain, the waters above, water that comes from Yahweh…
It would seem that a major schism would so weaken the church that it would be ill-suited to major expansion and growth. So it might seem. In his contribution to Sacred Schisms , however, Joseph Bryant argues that the third-century schism between the Catholic and Katharoi factions actually facilitated the…
Moses is typically depicted in modern scholarship as a prophet. There is reason for that, but in his monograph on Royal Motifs in the Pentateuchal Portrayal of Moses , Danny Mathews argues that the Pentateuch surrounds Moses with various royal symbolisms as well. He points to Deuteronomy 33:4-5, “Moses charged…
When Franco Basaglia took over the Gorizia asylum in 1961, it reminded him of his time in a fascist prison back in 1944. The stench of death and shit was overwhelming, and it made Basaglia physically ill. According to John Foot's The Man Who Closed the Asylums , it was…
Marilynne Robinson has some sobering things to say about Christianity, America, and fear. She starts from the premise, by no means universally accepted in the world of the New York Review of Books , that “America is a Christian country.” From this she formulates a two-part thesis: “first, contemporary America…
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