Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
We lost Crimea. That is very clear. Putin proved he was not lying when he said he would place women and children ahead of his soldiers to storm Ukrainian military bases. Russian soldiers did exactly that with women (some who volunteered and some who were forced). Russia now occupies all…
Sound is an indicator of life and energy. “Sound signals the present use of power, since sound must be in active production to exist at all.” Things don’t have to be alive to make themselves visible, and “a primitive hunter can see, feel, smell, and taste an elephant when the…
In the most famous section of his best-known novel, Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov brings forward his case against God. He opens with a horrific litany of outrages against children. Turkish soldiers make a baby laugh and then shoot a pistol into his face. A little girl is beaten, thrashed, kicked by…
At the heart of Esther Lightcap Meek's splendid Little Manual for Knowing is a concept she picked up from Michael Polanyi, "subsidiary-focal integration." The concept begins from the insight that all our knowing, all our experience, is double. We focus on something, but we are capable of "indwelling" that focal…
Jesus promises the overcomers of Pergamum "hidden manna" and a "white stone." The hidden manna is often linked with the manna stashed away in the ark of the covenant. The white stone has proved more elusive. Exodus tells us that manna was white (Exodus 16:31) and like bdellium (Numbers 11:7),…
Leviticus 23 begins with a reference to “Yahweh’s appointed times” ( mo’ade-YHWH ). Mo’ed is the common term for the feasts of Israel. A few dimensions to this term. First, it means “appointed time” or “designated time.” It is a time set by Yahweh. Yahweh has claimed certain times as…
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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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