Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
God is a righteous judge, And a God who has indignation every day. If a man does not repent, He will sharpen His sword; He has bent His bow and made it ready (Psalm 7.11, 12). David’s inspired lyrics do not sound very encouraging to modern ears–especially to modern Christian…
The story of the Good Samaritan (Lk. 10:25-37) is one of the best known and most loved of Jesus’ parables. I am not going to attempt to exegete the passage, as that has been done admirably and ably by others. Rather, I want to briefly examine what bearing the passage…
In Romans 2.6-16, Paul writes, He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there…
It was still dark as David approached the crest of the little ridge. The eastern horizon was not even gray. It was early. But he knew this trail well. Every morning before dawn and every evening before dark, he would walk down to the well and carry water back to…
The theme of Romans is the righteousness of God (Rom. 1:16-17). That is to say, Romans is something of a theodicy. Paul is defending God’s covenant faithfulness, particularly in light of Jewish unfaithfulness. How does it work? Without getting into exegetical details, we can still sketch out the big picture.…
The New Perspective on Paul (NPP) is a loosely defined movement held together primarily by a common understanding of Second Temple Judaism. All NPP theologians basically adhere, with varying degrees of intensity and consistency, to Ed Sanders’ claims with regard to the nature of pre-70 A.D. Judaism. Sanders has sought…
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According to the standard story, Catholicism made its peace with democracy rather suddenly in the first half of the twentieth century, culminating in Vatican II. On this narrative, Vatican I represented the kind of authoritarianism that the second Vatican council overturned. Not so, argues Emile Perreau-Saussine in his Catholicism and…
Looking at maps of the 19th-century globe, you get the impression of a solid, complete (and a solidly and completely pink) British empire. That’s a “cartographical illusion,” says John Darwin in his Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain . We forget that “this was always an empire-in-making, indeed an…
An 1880 ad for Singer Sewing machines offers a vision of humanity united by technology: “On every sea are floating the Singer Machines; along every road pressed by the foot of civilized man this tireless ally of the world’s great sisterhood is going upon its errand of helpfulness. Its cheering…
Why did the Greeks and Romans sacrifice? The TLS reviewer of two new books on the subject, Smoke Signals for the Gods: Ancient Greek Sacrifice from the Archaic through Roman Periods and Greek and Roman Animal Sacrifice: Ancient Victims, Modern Observers , summarizes the main theories, which come from Walter…
The debate over Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False continues apace. The TLS reviewer observes that Nagel’s “provocation” of a book doesn’t simply demand an explanation for how consciousness arose, but demands to know how consciousness is so central a…
In Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation , Roger Scruton pinpoints the ethical and metaphysical issue in same-sex sexuality: “The heterosexual ventures towards an individual whose gender confines him within another world. The homosexual unites with an individual who does not lie beyond the divide which separates the world of men…
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