Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Paradosis Center at John Brown University in Siloam Spring, Arkansas, put on its first conference last week, it was a remarkable event. It was an ecumenical conference including Orthodox (John Behr, Edith Humphrey, others), Catholic (Rusty Reno, Michael Root, others), and Evangelical (Timothy George, David Lyle Jeffrey). Unusually for…
Naphtali Meshel observes in his new The "Grammar" of Sacrifice that scholars have been talking for decades about the "grammatical" character of ritual and sacrifice in general, but have never actually analyzed a specific ritual or sacrificial system grammatically. Some even talk about a "universal grammar" of sacrifice "even though…
Some Christians are rather breezy about the problem of evil. We shouldn't be. Do I need to remind you of the grisly beheadings that have taken place over the past few weeks? Do I need to remind you of the blood of innocents that’s been spilled in our own country?…
Have you ever been to a wedding where the heavens opened and a voice declared the couple “husband and wife”? Few of us have. Beautiful as they are, most marriages are quite mundane. Yet when Jesus talks about marriage, He describes it as something that God does: “What God has…
Jesus is the last and greatest of the Prophets. He is the Prophet that Moses predicted (Deuteronomy 18). That means He gives the final word, brings the blueprints for the final temple, speaks the final world into existence, and has complete and permanent access to the divine court, where He…
Paul stands against those who are “troubling” or “disturbing” the Galatians churches ( tarasso ; 1:7; also in 5:10). The reference seems to be two great troublers from the Old Testament. First, Achan is described as a “troubler” for the problems he causes in the aftermath of the battle at…
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Genesis 1 presents a macro-creation, Genesis 2 a micro-creation. The latter follows the former, for humanity is micro-cosmic. The Spirit hovers over waters, and water arises to water the ground. God speaks light into existence, and by the same breath He makes Adam a living soul. Day 1. Yahweh forms…
We stand, we kneel, we sit, we stand, we kneel. The postures of liturgy write “upon the bodies of those who perform it frequently a habit of acting as an unworthy recipient of a prevenient gift” (Paul Griffiths, Decreation , 232). By developing the habits that the liturgy impresses on…
“When we do science,” writes William Dembski in his Being As Communion (85), “we don't encounter matter in its raw state nor do we encounter sensory experiences in their raw state. Rather, we encounter certain patterns to the exclusion of others. In other words, we encounter information. The material and…
The Creator God is a speaker, who speaks to form the formless, dark, and empty void into the structured and glorious cosmos. As images of the world-making God who speaks, we also make worlds with words. Genesis 1 provides a paradigm, an allegory of world-making words. In the darkness, words…
NT Wright has insisted over the years that the apocalyptic language of the gospels (Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21) doesn't refer to the end of the space-time universe but to the end of a socio-political order. Edward Adams dissents in his 2007 The Stars Will Fall From Heaven .…
Laura Pelaschiar's forthcoming Joyce/Shakespeare collects essays that explore the various facts of Joyce's use, misuse, criticism, and combat with Shakespeare. She observes that “Shakespeare’s existence in Joyce is tentacular and functions on many different levels: cultural, structural, political, thematic, contrapuntal, imitational, quotational/misquotational, stylistic, lexical, psychological, or psycholiterary.” Joyce's reception of…
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