Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8) O God the Father, creator of heaven and earth, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, who inspired Creation with the breath of your nostrils, who placed Adam in the…
For nearly a half-century, Sodom has been a key symbol in the American culture wars. On the one side, we have an aggressive movement among homosexuals that has first decriminalized homosexual conduct, then to force cultural and legal recognition of homosexuals as a minority and to normalize homosexual behaviors, finally…
Speaking of the Church, Romans 11:16-17 says, "And if the root be holy, the branches are also. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the root of the fatness of the…
At the end of Isaiah 61, Yahweh's Servant rejoices because the Lord clothes Him with salvation and righteousness. He decks Him like a bridegroom with a garland on His head. He wears jewels like a bride. He is a new bridegroom in a new garden of Eden, a garden of…
Before anything else, a word about “Torah” may be in order. I have been persuaded that “law” is a bad translation of “Torah,” even though it is evident that what is called “Torah” does have commandments, statutes, and ordinances in abundance. Why not “law?” “Law” as a translation for “Torah”…
Few novelists seem as innocent of the temptation to punditry as Jane Austen. Though living through a period that witnessed the birth of an independent United States, the French Revolution and the Terror, the Napoleonic wars and the rise of revolutionary romanticism, and the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, she…
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Calvin O. Schrag has this helpful critique of what he calls the “foundationalist paradigm”: It “profeers a theoretical construct of mind that is designed to determine in advance the criteria for what counts as knowledge, both knowledge of oneself and knowledge of the world. It is as though one were…
The magi come searching for Jesus from the east, from Persia, moving west toward the promised land, as Israel did following the Babylonian exile. As they travel, they follow a star, as Israel followed the pillar of cloud and fire from Egypt. They bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh to worship…
The Israel that the Son of God entered in the incarnation was not some pristine, sinless Israel. God took on a genealogy that included harlots, adulterers, murderers, and idolaters. God did not keep his distance from his bride, but came near to rescue her. Though initially intending to put Mary…
Matthew 1:24-2:1: And Joseph arose from his sleep, and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took her as his wife, and kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called his name Jesus. Now . . . Jesus was born in…
Joseph is often a neglected character in the Christmas story. In paintings and crèches, he politely stands to the side so that the Madonna and child can be at the focal point. In medieval mystery plays, he was often a comic character, a doddering old man more marginal even than…
This is not a paper, and that is not an ironic self-referential comment like Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe . This really is not a paper. It is a gesture toward a paper, a collection of fragments and notes. There is a goal here, a telos and trajectory: These…
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