Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Thus says the Lord: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more” (Jer 31:15). The Night of the Hunter belongs on every Christian’s Christmas list. My family has even…
One important part of Jesus's birth narrative is the presence of angels. The angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary, announcing that she would bear a son. And then, on the night Jesus was born, a whole host of angels appeared to the shepherds. Angels are mysterious creatures to us.…
I was settled nicely into my chair and listening to the conversation in an undergrad religion seminar, my last required course to graduate. Though a few Christians sat scattered around the room, the course itself was dedicated to poking holes in traditional understandings of the Bible: our readings deconstructed notions…
God’s symbols belong to Him and to His people. They are constantly at work in the world, including the world of film, music, painting, architecture, and other artforms. You cannot escape God’s symbols or the meaning He has woven into the created order. Artists use and borrow God’s symbols, whether…
For centuries, Christians identified Israel in the Old Testament as a single, literal ethnic group, often called “the Jews.” Even supersessionists – those who believed the Church superseded Israel – assumed the clear-cut, technical definition of “Israel” in the Bible is the ethnic group. However, a deeper dive into Genesis,…
Misreading Intent In the opening verses of Matthew 11, the reader is confronted immediately by John the baptizer who has been imprisoned since 4:12. John poses a question to Jesus, inquiring from prison as to whether or not he is Israel’s awaited Messiah or if they should anticipate another: “Are…
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I n a 2009 piece in The Weekly Standard , Sam Schulman argues that gay marriage replicates “a very limited, very modern, and very culture-bound version of marriage. Gay advocates have chosen wisely in this. They are replicating what we might call the ‘romantic marriage,' a kind of marriage that…
It's not clear how much rethinking Gordon Wenham has done to produce his Rethinking Genesis 1-11 . After all, Wenham has been writing illuminating commentary about the early chapters of Genesis for a long time. Re-thought or not, his new little book contains some treasures. He observes the inversion of…
R onald Byars knows that mainline churches are in trouble, and in Finding Our Balance , he lays out a program for renewal. Much depends on restoring a positive notion of authority and a bounded orthodoxy, since “every community, including the ecumenical church, needs boundaries” (46). Doctrinal renewal is not…
Rowan Greer's One Path for All is a study of Gregory of Nyssa's writings on the Christian life. It includes a dozen selections from Gregory's works, and then a series of essays on the pathway of pilgrimage and battle that every baptized person must, along with all the baptized, walk.…
Lisa Deam's A World Transformed is an engaging, meditative study of what she calls the “spirituality of medieval maps.” Maps, she argues, are never neutral. They “show what their users want and need to believe about the world. They allow us to daydream, to plot and scheme, to envision our…
Our very existence is gift. That means that our very existence involves participation in the life of the giver. Paul Griffiths (Decreation, 200) puts it this way: “the fact that you are is sheer unmerited gift, and what you are is a participant in the LORD.” Sin is the rejection…
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