Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Book of Genesis contains eleven distinct markers readily acknowledged as the toledot formula. 1 Commentator Nahum Sarna counts the ’elleh toledot to be “…one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Book of Genesis”. 2 Among translations, the noun is variously translated as “generations” (ESV, KJV), “records of the generations”…
The answer that immediately comes to mind to the question in the title is Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah. He was conceived during the extension of life that God granted Hezekiah in response to his ardent prayer on his sick bed (2 Kings 20:1-11, 21:1). His reign is summarized in…
Back in 2019, on a whim, I sketched out a setting for a modern fantasy story: a single coffee shop that is simultaneously present in multiple cities throughout the world: “...you know the one. Books by local authors, brochures for a walking tour of the city’s outdoor sculpture, a poetry…
Peter O’Brien’s translation of Colossians 4:2 surprised me: “Persevere in prayer as you watch for the Lord’s return, and be thankful.” 1 What is surprising about that? Well, none of my English translations mentioned “the Lord’s return” — nor does the Greek text! Translated literally, the verse just says: “In…
I Natural Law This is a brief (well, briefer than it could be) first attempt at responding to a very small section of Stephen Wolfe’s recent book The Case for Christian Nationalism . It’s partial, deeply incomplete, and does not at all address the book as a whole; it is…
The scuttlebutt of the last hundred years would tell us that Albert Einstein was a horrible husband, Winston Churchill was a racist, Mother Theresa was a hypocrite, and Caravaggio a murderer. From Benjamin Britten’s boys to Gandhi’s girls, it can be depressing and confusing to hear about people of great…
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Jonathan Ree’s delightful I See A Voice glances at Enlightenment-era efforts to work out analogies between color and musical harmonies. Newton’s Optics was key. He argued that “just as all different tones can be located on a single scale running from the highest to the lowest pitch of audible sound,…
We don’t hear sounds, Heidegger said. That’s an abstraction. What we hear are things making sounds - “the creaking wagon, or the motor cycle . . . the column on the mark, the north wind, the woodpecker tapping, the fire crackling” (quoted in Jonathan Ree, I See A Voice ,…
Voice has often been seen as expression, as the coming into public space of something within. Given its reliance on breath, it was easy to conclude that voice is the expression of the soul. According to Ree ( I See A Voice ), it was Herder who broke through this…
Diane Thompson concludes her essay in Dostoevsky and the Christian Tradition with this superb description of the place of God’s Word in the words of Dostoevsky’s novels, and his characters: “Dostoevsky’s feeling for the dynamic aspect of the Logos was exceptionally strong, as was his gift for making it a…
Consciousness enters the world and the stones remain stones and the sun the sun. Still existence becomes completely different when consciousness arises, Bakhtin argues in Speech Genres . This happens become the coming of consciousness is the coming of “the witness and the judge” (137). “A stone is still stony…
Nabokov didn’t much like Dostoevsky. What interests him in literature is “enduring art and individual genius,” and from this viewpoint Dostoevsky is mediocre: “with flashes of excellent humor, but, alas, with wastelands of literary platitudes in between” ( Lectures on Russian Literature , 68). His characters are mentally unbalanced, his…
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