Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Creationism is debated widely in the US, especially when it comes to teaching creation as an alternative theory of origins in public schools. Every few months, there’s another poll showing that many Americans still believe Ussher’s claim that the world was created around 4000 BC, which always elicits a contemptuous…
Walker Percy died in 1990, but his six published novels and his collections of essays are more relevant than when he wrote them. Percy was an American Dostoevsky, and that was no accident. “The European novels,” he says in a 1974 interview, “are more philosophical, more novels of ideas.” Dostoevsky,…
The Spirit is God’s agent for renewing the creation, for restoring bonds between nations, for knitting together people into the body of Christ. The Spirit is the renewer of the world, and the bond of all relations. That means that if you want your family to be knit together, if…
In their basic physical sense , the verbs translated as "persecute" in the Bible mean “chase” or “pursue,” and that fits the context quite naturally. As Pharaoh “pursued” (LXX, dioko ; Heb. radaph ) Israel into the wilderness, for example, so the dragon chases the woman back to her place…
Seng-Kong Tan’s Fullness Received and Returned is a densely argued, thoroughly researched, contextually sensitive study of participation in the soteriology of Jonathan Edwards. Along the way, Tan deals with many of the central themes in Edwards’s theology. As with many recent studies of Edwards, Tan’s monograph demonstrates both Edwards’s creativity…
The title of James Joyce’s first novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man indicates that it is a bildungsroman , a story of formation that describes the formative experiences of a poet who aspires to artistic greatness. The education described is Joyce’s own. The novel recounts the failing…
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Phyz.org reports that clothing still makes the man, but it may not be the most expensive of fashionable clothing that makes the best status statement. Harvard University researchers found that students attributed higher status to the more slovenly: “In one study, students were asked to rank the perceived professional status…
Exhaustion has become a popular topic in Germany, many complaining “We are the most exhausted age.” Wolfgang Martynkewicz provides some contrary evidence, though he doesn’t appear to know it. In Das Zeitalter der Erschopfung , he examines German bourgeois and bohemians of the early twentieth century and finds that they…
Jesus’ declaration to the prostrate John (Revelation 1:17-18a) is a neat little, rich little chiasm: A. I am ( ego eimi ) B. First C. Last D. Living One C’. Became dead B’. Behold! Alive A’. I am ( eimi ) to ages of ages Several observations: First, the whole…
In addition to heaven, earth, sea, and underworld, Mesopotamian cosmology believes in an intermediate region between the earth and the underworld, belonging to the god Ea. Though not entirely consistent in mythologies, and the relationship between the Apsu and the sea and the Apsu and the underworld is ambiguous, Horowitz…
David Biale observes in Blood and Belief that “the ancient Israelites were the only Near Easterners to make blood a central element in their religious rituals” (10). He fills out the picture: “There were, to be sure, magical and medical rituals mentioned in Akkadian, Sumerian, and Hittite texts that used…
Drawing on the work of Jonathan Klawans ( Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism ) and others, David Biale ( Blood and Belief ) points to the difficulty of reconciling the “Priestly” and “Holiness” sections of Leviticus. In the “Priestly” code, found in Leviticus 11-15 and Numbers 19,. impurity is…
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