Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
What do you think of the way "creation science" uses the "second law of thermodynamics" to argue that human society will become more and more depraved, and that the universe is running down? Creation Science is not monolithic, and so it would be unfair to say that everyone working in…
From time to time we receive questions that are interesting, and that other people would also be interested in. I'll [address] two such questions in this issue [and the next]. I recently made a will which, in the event that my wife does not survive me, grants my eldest son…
As we go from Old Testament chronology to New Testament chronology, it will be a good idea to examine a deep-seated myth that is profoundly intertwined with Biblical Christianity. I have in mind the myth that there is in the Bible such a thing as a collection of books called…
Several years ago, the Wall Street Journal gave prominent recognition to a book called Who Wrote the Bible? The book was a popularization of the famous "Documentary Hypothesis," which claims that the Pentateuch was not the work of Moses, but was a (rather incompetent) pastiche of contradictory sources written much…
The epistle of James has long presented dificulties for New Testament scholars. Its seemingly moralistic tone, its apparent inattention to theological concerns, its defense of "justification by works" all have made it dificult for interpreters to discern its compatibility with other New Testament books. Luther’s dismissal of James as an…
Why the Lamb? But why the lamb? We have seen that the bull was the offering for the sins of priests, especially as they represented the nation before God in His house. Wasn’t Christ the greatest of all men? Wasn’t He the Great High Priest? Should He not rather be…
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This scene, like the scene that opens Act 3, shows Hamlet encountering a woman who in his mind has betrayed him. Again, he has been sent for, and probably suspects that it is another setup like the one with Ophelia. He has just come from the play, ready to drink…
FO Matthiessen described Melville’s Pierre as “an American Hamlet,” a novel that attempts to “translate” Shakespeare into 19th-century American life. In part, this is a matter of Melville matching characters and plots: “Lucy’s pale innocence fails Pierre as Ophelia’s did Hamlet; the well-named Reverend Mr. Falsgrave’s cushioned voice of worldly…
Derrida, famously, challenges what he calls the metaphysics of presence. What is challenging is not the reality of presence as such, but the notion that we can arrive at some pure presence of a thing, a moment, a self that is unmixed with anything other than itself. A pure instant…
Culler offers an example from Nietzsche that provides an excellent example of the ju-jitsu of deconstruction. Nietzsche argues that causality is not something given, but is the product of a rhetorical operation, a chronological reversal ( chronologische Umdrehung ). I feel a pain, and go searching for a cause of…
At the beginning of his book on Deconstruction , Jonathan Culler notes that critical theory, seen “as an attempt to establish the validity or invalidity of particular interpretive procedures,” is profoundly indebted to New Criticism: This movement “not only instilled the assumption that the purpose of literary study is the…
All page numbers are from the Heany translation. The central focus of the first two fights is Heorot, the mead-hall of Hrothgar. The mead-hall is the focus of a complex of imagery. (The last fight has a similar origin, as Beowulf’s hall is destroyed by the dragon. The house is…
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