Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
10. Do not slander [tattle on] a slave to his master, Lest he curse [denounce] you and you be found guilty. The Sojourner of Proverbs 30 is a humble man. He makes this clear in verses 2-4, where he says that he is stupider than anyone else on earth, but…
In retrospect and at first glance, many of the issues that have plagued and divided the Church seem incredibly trivial. The Quartodecimians were branded as heretics for celebrating Easter on 14 Nisan. One of the issues that divided the Eastern and Western Churches in 1054 was the kind of bread…
The gifts of the wise men have been commonly interpreted as royal gifts to the infant King of the Jews. Each of the three gifts is, indeed, connected with kings and kingship in Scripture. The Lord’s anointed is pictured wearing a crown of gold in Psalm 21:3, and the gold…
The Church is not in good shape. Nearly every week we hear about another prominent Christian leader who has fallen into scandalous sin. Many shepherds feed their flocks a diet of baby food, if not outright poison. Few Churches celebrate the Lord’s Supper regularly, and few Christians appreciate its importance.…
Two things I asked of Thee, Do not refuse me before I die: Keep deception and words of falsehood far from me, Give me neither poverty nor riches, Feed me with the food that it my portion, Lest I be full and deny Thee, And say, "Who is the LORD?"…
During the Middle Ages, Joseph, the husband of Mary, was the butt of many jokes. Medieval theater and art often depicted him as something of a buffoon, decidedly marginal to the gospel story. In part, this was the unfortunate obverse of the exaltation of Mary; any man would suffer by…
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L ouis, the dying, grasping, hateful narrator of Francois Mauriac's Vipers' Tangle believes the “tangle of vipers was outside myself,” forming a “hideous circle” consisting of his wife and children. He has occasional moments of lucidity when he recognizes that the satanic nest is really within, as in this self-reflection…
L eviticus 18 consists largely of rules on sex-permitted degrees of consanguinity, prohibited sex acts like homosexual sodomy and bestiality and adultery. The chapter begins, though, with a more general warning against conforming to Egyptian and Canaanite ways of life. Verse 3 puts this in a series of parallel clauses…
W hen Shakespeare's Richard II disembarks in Wales, he learns that Henry Bolingbroke has usurped his throne and that three of his most trusted allies have turned Judas—“three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas!” (3.2.132). Villains, vipers, dogs, and snakes have become his courtiers. The most shocking blow, though,…
K evin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert ( What Is the Mission of the Church? ) are concerned about the inflation of missionality in Evangelicalism. They are in favor of churches that engage in mercy ministry and advocate for justice but they insist that these dimensions of the church's work are…
G enealogies may function “tribally,” that is, to secure the present of the tribe in the past, to hold the present hostage to the past, and to ensure that there is no variation. Change is the enemy; genealogies record change, but record change in a way that displays a continuous…
T oward the end of his book on hands , British psychoanalyst Darian Leader summarizes one of the main themes of the work: “Keeping our hands busy has always been a central human activity” (107). That busyness can take the form of a touch that draws us close, the grasping…
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