Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Suppose that the theistic evolutionists are right, and that the Big Bang Hypothesis is correct. In that case, God originally created a Primeval Atom, which then exploded and congealed to form the present universe. Now, if you had arrived on the scene one quintillionth of a second after God created…
According to Galatians 3, Abraham heard the gospel when the Lord promised that "all the nations shall be blessed in you." Paul quotes here from Genesis 12:3, but the context puts an odd slant on the Old Testament text. Galatians 3 starts with a series of rhetorical questions about the…
Ephesians 2.15: ton vomon twv enotwn en dogmasin katargesas, ina tous duo ktise en autw eis ena kainon anthrwpon, poiwn eirenen having annulled the law of the commandments in decrees, in order that He might create in Him[self] the two into one new man, making peace. The above translation is…
In The Oddness of the Feast of Booths , we saw that the Feast of Booths is a commemoration of the first encampment of Israel at Sukkoth (Booths) in Exodus 12:37, almost certainly the first celebration of the week of Unleavened Bread after the first Passover. The Feast of Booths…
James Jordan has pointed out in Through New Eyes and elsewhere that the Mosaic system of worship comes to an end with the dismemberment of the tabernacle in 1 Samuel 4-6. Because of the sins of Eli and his sons, that priestly family is cut off and the ark is…
In a significant essay in the 19 April 1999 issue of The Weekly Standard, entitled "Wars of Hatred and the Hatred of War," Charles H. Fairbanks, Jr., points out a significant shift that seems to be taking place in the modern world. He begins by asserting his thesis, that a…
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Since Mauss re-discovered the truism that there ain’t no such thing as a free gift, philosophers and theologians have fretted over the broken promise of the “pure gift” - a no-strings gift, a gift without expectation of return. It’s a Kantian deformation of an evangelical hope; but it’s bound to…
When the original creation is set up, there are three zones in the material creation: heaven, earth, and sea. Corresponding to this threefold classification are the three zones on the land: garden, land, world. These are already mapped in the creation before sin, and especially after the fall they are…
To punish Israel’s sins, Yahweh threatens to remove “the whole supply of bread and the whole supply of water” (Isaiah 3:1). It sounds like a drought and famine, but as the passage goes on, the drought is a drought of leadership. Yahweh will remove bread and water insofar as he…
In the NYTBR , the redoubtable Tom Shone reviews a couple of recent books that explore the borderlands between movies and live. Shone points out the paradox that all movie-lovers experience. We can’t live the movies. “A life lived at a constant pitch of screwball comedy is a recipe for…
Alec Wilkinson’s New Yorker profile of mathematician Yitang Zhang is a fascinating character sketch and an introduction to the world of pure mathematics. Along the way, Wilkinson lists some of the wonders and mysteries of prime numbers: “No formula predicts the occurrence of primes—they behave as if they appear randomly.…
Many things contribute to the fidgety discomfort one feels one reading Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice . There’s our entry into the mind of Gustav Aschenbach, an aging, highly sensitive, very famous writer. There’s the Lolita infatuation he has with Tadzio, a “beautiful” Polish boy whom Aschenbach watches from his…
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