Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If 1 Chronicles were a movie, it would begin with two hours and forty-five minutes of credits: Name after name scrolling across the screen, most of them (as far as we’re concerned) obscurities and nonentities and unknowns, forgotten fathers and sons and mighty men; all the bit players in the…
Let me locate myself. I’m sitting on a sand dune, three hundred feet above the blue-as-a-swimmer-crab water of Lake Michigan. I’m so high above the surface that the sound of the waves flopping onto the beach is as quiet as wind easing through a screen door. Around me are several…
My title is too grand. What I offer here falls far short of a full description of poetry. I barely offer a definition. A more accurate title would be “Axioms and Suspicions About Poetry.” Axioms first. I have three of them. The first is the closest I can come to…
In his book In Defense of Food Michael Pollan does just what the title suggests, he defends food. Pollan argues that the presupposition behind modern food science, or “nutritionism” as he calls it, is that humans don’t need food, they need nutrients. To be sure, modern science is not yet…
The early church took possession of the Roman Empire within a few centuries, largely because she ministered sacrificially in word and deed. The church provided services and care that the empire and pagan religions could not in times of crisis. The faithful witness of those serving Christians bore great fruit…
My title, “The Original Murder” will be understood by many readers, if not almost all, to refer to Cain’s murder of Abel, but I have in mind the very first murder, the one which Jesus pointed to when He said that Satan was a murderer “from the beginning.” “You are…
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Radner ( A Brutal Unity: The Spiritual Politics of the Christian Church , 181) concludes a rich discussion of the biblical pattern of episcopal ministry with this: “The early Church’s, indeed the whole developed tradition’s, theological discussion of apostolic episcopacy stands generally to the side of discussions of jurisdiction, territorial…
Radner ( A Brutal Unity: The Spiritual Politics of the Christian Church , 33-4) analyzes the Rwandan genocide to unmask the church’s role in the bloodshed. Far from heading off potential violence, the deliberate practices of missionaries often created the conditions for a future holocaust. Catholic missionaries, for instance, adopted…
Separation is a result of sin. But Ephraim Radner points out ( A Brutal Unity: The Spiritual Politics of the Christian Church , 428) that “separation also lies at the center of creation: God separates, or literally ‘divides’ light and darkness, waters and earth (firmament), day and night (stars .…
The sea beast of Revelation 13 is clearly a composite of the beasts of Daniel. It has features of a lion, a bear, and a leopard, which match the first three beasts of Daniel’s vision. If we can import Daniel’s imagery into Revelation 13, we can say that the sea…
The sea beast of Revelation 13 entices everyone to worship him “whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb” (v. 8). Interpreters commonly take the book of life as an image of election: It is a list of…
The Jerusalem Council described in Acts 15 presents “a winning picture of open-ended discussion, leading to consensus, through the ‘facilitation’ of a leader and a faith in God’s more primary direction through the Spirit.” It is “a true ‘coming together of many minds’ in a way that has become a…
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