Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If you’re a preacher looking for good commentaries on Ezra, you’ll struggle. Certainly to find ones that wrestle in good detail with the text. And certainly ones that don’t cost you an arm and a leg. There’s a good bit more for Nehemiah, which is odd, as the two are…
Quick thought experiment: try to pretend you’ve never read 1 John before. Read 1:1-6. Go ahead; I’ll wait. Now, on to v. 7: “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with ______….” What word would you expect in that blank, based…
In my work as a Bible translator, I was recently checking our translation team’s draft of Genesis 8:8, which says of Noah (translating the Hebrew quite literally): And he sent out the dove from with him to see: had the waters lessened from upon the face of the ground? Part…
Just in case a reader may not know Weinberg, he is a theoretical physicist and the winner of the Nobel prize in physics in 1979, as well as countless other prizes for his research. He is also a prolific, lucid, and captivating writer. If you want to read something on…
Colossians 1:15-20 is a famous passage in Paul’s epistles because it is a succinct and powerful poem. It appears even to have been a hymn. Given the uniquely Pauline language — “reconciliation” is a term used only by Paul — it should not seem odd to attribute the poem/hymn to…
Stalker (1979) is a film by Andrei Tarkovsky based on Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. It shows a day from the life of a stalker, a man who enters the so-called "Zone", an Alien landing site, where he leads people to a room that grants people’s innermost desires, which…
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In a 1987 essay on equality as a moral ideal , Harry Frankfurt notes that setting up equality of wealth or income as a social ideal diverts one's attention from oneself to concern over the assets of others: “To the extent that people are preoccupied with equality for its own…
In both Hebrew ( mal'ak ) and Greek, “angel” means “messenger.” At the outset, the “angels” who appear to human beings are spiritual beings. Yahweh Himself comes to Abraham as the Angel of Yahweh (Genesis 18-19), and then to Gideon and Samson's parents. In each case, the human recipients offer…
Yahweh chose Abram and called him from Ur. He promised a land, and enough see to fill the land and make it fruitful. With the promises came obligations. Yahweh “knew” Abram so that Abram might do something to achieve certain results. The Abrahamic obligation is laid out succinctly in Genesis…
Almost no one knows the name of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. That is unfortunate, but may be changing as Rosenstock's intimate friend Franz Rosenzweig enjoys a boomlet of attention and with the publication of Wayne Cristaudo's Religion, Redemption, and Revolution . Among that tiny subculture that has actually heard of Rosenstock, it…
In a 2013 essay evaluating the Parliamentary bill on gay marriage, John Milbank observes that British “legislators have recognised that it would be intolerable to define gay marriage in terms equivalent to ‘consummation,’ or to permit ‘adultery’ as legitimate ground for gay divorce.” In these decisions, “the legislators have been…
In his Tristan and Isolde , Gottfried of Strassburg lays out a non-courtly, non-comic, mystical vision of love. As WTH Jackson puts it in The Anatomy of Love , Gottfried rejects the comic vision of love as uncomplicated and easy joy. He also rejects the idea that the lover seeks…
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