Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I just finished re-reading G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday . I have in the past had the temerity to say that I believe it to be the best novel of the 20th century. Be that as it may, I still maintain that it is at least one…
And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against and a sword will pierce through your own soul also, that thoughts out of many hearts may be…
I was inspired to write this article after reading John Ahern’s The Case for Shorter Hymnals first published on Theopolis Institute’s website on November 16, 2021. Mr. Ahern and I are writing with different audiences and emphases in mind. I am thankful we both share a mutual desire to see…
If you’ve spent any time in the social-media galaxy of Christian cultural commentators, you have almost definitely run across the Latin phrase Imago Dei . It means image of God . Why they usually say it in Latin, I couldn’t tell you. We saw it in the wake of the…
The Gospel of Matthew—indeed, the New Testament—begins with a list of names, and that list of names is introduced by this heading: “The book of the generations of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Why start like this? Why “the son of David” and “the son…
A blade is raised. A child wails. But the brow under the crown is untroubled. Solomon knows that the raising of the sword will reveal the true parent and the identity of the son. But how did he know this? Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac certainly bears some of the…
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A couple of quotations from Hart’s biography of Nevin: “The force of the question in the end is nothing less than this, whether the original catholic doctrine concerning the Church, as it stood in universal authority through all ages before the Reformation, is to be received and held still as…
John Milbank’s opening essay in the recently-released Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition (edited by James KA Smith and James Olthuis) is a challenging critique of Calvin and the Reformed tradition, one that I hope to interact with more in the future. One particularly striking passage had to do with…
Yahweh is the trickster God of 1-2 Kings. He tricks the Moabites into thinking that the three kings have slaughtered each other (2 Kings 3), and Israel rises from their camp and slaughters them. He tricks the Arameans in the opposite way: chasing them away from their camp so that…
Why the delay of judgment throughout 1-2 Kings? Two reasons: First, judgment is passed, but Yahweh waits for the sin of the Amorites to come to completion, for sin to ripen to be utterly sinful. Second, Yahweh gives time for the declaration of judgment to work repentance among a remnant.…
Another aspect of the “satire” of royal power in 1-2 Kings comes out when we examine scenes of womena appealing for help before an authority. Early in Kings, women appeal to Kings and receive what they need (Bath-sheba and David; prostitutes and Solomon). Sheba is overwhelmed by Solomon’s kingdom. For…
Why does Yahweh send two prophets to the Omrides? Two witnesses no doubt. But their ministries are so similar in many respects; why double it? And what, if any, are the differences between them? One difference is geography. Elijah spends a good bit of the narrative on the far side…
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