Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
We lost Crimea. That is very clear. Putin proved he was not lying when he said he would place women and children ahead of his soldiers to storm Ukrainian military bases. Russian soldiers did exactly that with women (some who volunteered and some who were forced). Russia now occupies all…
Sound is an indicator of life and energy. “Sound signals the present use of power, since sound must be in active production to exist at all.” Things don’t have to be alive to make themselves visible, and “a primitive hunter can see, feel, smell, and taste an elephant when the…
In the most famous section of his best-known novel, Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov brings forward his case against God. He opens with a horrific litany of outrages against children. Turkish soldiers make a baby laugh and then shoot a pistol into his face. A little girl is beaten, thrashed, kicked by…
At the heart of Esther Lightcap Meek's splendid Little Manual for Knowing is a concept she picked up from Michael Polanyi, "subsidiary-focal integration." The concept begins from the insight that all our knowing, all our experience, is double. We focus on something, but we are capable of "indwelling" that focal…
Jesus promises the overcomers of Pergamum "hidden manna" and a "white stone." The hidden manna is often linked with the manna stashed away in the ark of the covenant. The white stone has proved more elusive. Exodus tells us that manna was white (Exodus 16:31) and like bdellium (Numbers 11:7),…
Leviticus 23 begins with a reference to “Yahweh’s appointed times” ( mo’ade-YHWH ). Mo’ed is the common term for the feasts of Israel. A few dimensions to this term. First, it means “appointed time” or “designated time.” It is a time set by Yahweh. Yahweh has claimed certain times as…
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Trump and Aristotle may not seem to have a lot in common, Carson Holloway argues that Aristotle's Politics illuminates the deep source of Trumpism. In Book 5, Aristotle describes the origins of political factions: “In general, he teaches, human beings become factious over equality and inequality. That is, political conflict…
Matthew Crawford is an advocate for the moral and intellectual value of manual labor. He argues in Shop Class as Soulcraft that “T he moral significance of work that grapples with material things may lie in the simple fact that such things lie outside the self. A washing machine, for…
Listening to Rod Dreher read the final paragraph of After Virtue , I was struck by MacIntyre's description of the political prerequisite for forming communities of virtue in the new dark ages that are upon us. Here's the famous passage: “It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between…
“Until the mid-1980s, green-felt table games such as blackjack and craps dominated casino floors while slot machines huddled on the sidelines, serving to occupy the female companions of ‘real' gamblers,” writes Natasha Dow Schull in her 2014 Addiction By Design . Slot machines were “often placed along hallways or near…
Comparisons of different religious beliefs and practices wasn't new in the 19th century. At least since the age of exploration, Europeans had been compiling long and detailed treatises comparing Christian with “heathen” religion. What was new in the 19th century was the formation of a discipline of comparative religion. In…
In an essay on “ The Intelligent Use of Space ,” David Kirsh observed that since we have bodies, “we are spatially located creatures: we must always be facing some direction, have only certain objects in view, be within reach of certain others. How we manage the space around us,…
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