Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Optimism is “an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome.” 1 On the other hand, pessimism is “an inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities or to expect the worst possible outcome.” We can see that optimism and…
If we wish to understand the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we must begin with seeing them as a part of the creational order. Trees, along with plants and seed-bearing things, come to life by the word of God as part of…
“I chant slips and irreversible disasters, wiltings, failures, scars, the little disappointments and the large, blue streaks down a world that wishes it was only suncolors.” Paul J. Pastor from Kintsugi Song I recently lost something very valuable. Something I’d had for years and used every day. But, it wasn’t…
In his eponymous book, Jonah follows an exodus pattern. He travels through the waves and east of the city into the wilderness. On a first reading, it looks like another use of this common literary shape in the Old Testament: salvation through the waters of death and the wilderness of…
“Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” The unknowing master of ceremonies didn’t know how right he was. We see this play out in John’s apocalypse. The end is like the beginning,…
Read in isolation, The Test of Adultery (Num 5:11-31) presents the reader with a seemingly bizarre ritual, conjuring up ideas bordering on the Salem Witch Trials. Beyond this, pressing questions linger—such as, “Why is the woman in particular singled out, while no test is provided for the husband of a…
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Ross Hastings argues in Jonathan Edwards and the Life of God that union in the Spirit is the center of Edwards's theology: “union is a significant driving force in Edwards’s Trinitarian theology, if not its overarching trope, and that his theology essentially tells a ‘from eternity, to eternity' story of…
When Moses finds a bush burning on Mount Sinai, he turns aside to look. “Yahweh” sees him turn aside, so “God” ( elohim ) calls from the bush, Moses, Moses (Exodus 3:4). Earlier, we were told that the Angel of Yahweh “appearing in a blazing fire from the midst of…
Ben McFarland wants to convince his readers that the periodic table is a thing of beauty forever ( A World From Dust ). He admits that the table as normally presented is “not quite symmetric,” but points out that with a small adjustment “a mathematical pattern appears”: “By row, there…
Making the Trinity practical seems like a very tall order. Few areas of Christian doctrine are more filled with technical mine fields, terms and concepts that must be used in very specific ways to avoid heresy. We have to talk about a God who is one God and yet somehow…
Andrew Walker's “Eat the Heart Out of the Infidel” reaches deep into the history of African Islam to explain the rise of the murderous Boko Haram movement in Nigeria. The Islam of Western Africa was not a pure Islam, but a syncretic Islam that retained and adapted the preexisting animism.…
In his recent biography of Frank Gehry, Building Art, Paul Goldberger recounts this incident: “a jet-lagged Gehry, already in his eighties, must make his way to a Spanish press conference from an interrupted nap: The first reporter asked him what his response was to charges that his buildings were more…
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