Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Optimism is “an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome.” 1 On the other hand, pessimism is “an inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities or to expect the worst possible outcome.” We can see that optimism and…
If we wish to understand the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we must begin with seeing them as a part of the creational order. Trees, along with plants and seed-bearing things, come to life by the word of God as part of…
“I chant slips and irreversible disasters, wiltings, failures, scars, the little disappointments and the large, blue streaks down a world that wishes it was only suncolors.” Paul J. Pastor from Kintsugi Song I recently lost something very valuable. Something I’d had for years and used every day. But, it wasn’t…
In his eponymous book, Jonah follows an exodus pattern. He travels through the waves and east of the city into the wilderness. On a first reading, it looks like another use of this common literary shape in the Old Testament: salvation through the waters of death and the wilderness of…
“Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” The unknowing master of ceremonies didn’t know how right he was. We see this play out in John’s apocalypse. The end is like the beginning,…
Read in isolation, The Test of Adultery (Num 5:11-31) presents the reader with a seemingly bizarre ritual, conjuring up ideas bordering on the Salem Witch Trials. Beyond this, pressing questions linger—such as, “Why is the woman in particular singled out, while no test is provided for the husband of a…
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In A World After Liberalism , Matthew Rose takes note of a generational change taking place in American conservatism. Younger conservatives associated with the alt right don’t read the same writers as their elders: “Instead of William Buckley it is Curtis Yarvin. Instead of Milton Friedman it is Peter Thiel.…
C olumbia Law School professor Philip Hamburger's The Administrative Threat makes a powerful case that the executive branch has assumed “absolute power,” albeit in a “soft” form. It is entirely unConstitutional. Through its administrative bureaucracy, the executive branch has taken on the power to create “legal obligation—the obligation to obey”…
I recently reviewed David Dusenbury’s The Innocence of Pontius Pilate in my First Things column . It’s an enthralling book, a work of scholarly detection that maps out hidden pathways of European intellectual and legal history, the first book (so far as Dusenbury knows) to investigate debates about Pilate’s innocence…
Whether they intend to or not, parents are training their children by the way they respond to COVID. Pastors are training their churches. There are temptations on every side. Put aside debates about the efficacy of masks, lockdowns, distancing, vaccines, and do some self-diagnosis: Will your response to the pandemic…
Greg Anderson began thinking about the thesis of his Realness of Things Past while working on a book on the “state” in classical Greece. He discovered there was no such thing as an Athenian “state,” and that conclusion led him to question the way historians do history. Instead of running…
To some Christians, typology is at best ornamental, pretty and cute, but irrelevant to the serious business of the church, irrelevant to the church’s mission. Some Christians have similar views of the Lord’s Supper: Inspiring and helpful, but hardly essential. To such skeptics, I say: “Luke 24. Tolle lege .”…
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