Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Optimism is “an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome.” 1 On the other hand, pessimism is “an inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities or to expect the worst possible outcome.” We can see that optimism and…
If we wish to understand the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we must begin with seeing them as a part of the creational order. Trees, along with plants and seed-bearing things, come to life by the word of God as part of…
“I chant slips and irreversible disasters, wiltings, failures, scars, the little disappointments and the large, blue streaks down a world that wishes it was only suncolors.” Paul J. Pastor from Kintsugi Song I recently lost something very valuable. Something I’d had for years and used every day. But, it wasn’t…
In his eponymous book, Jonah follows an exodus pattern. He travels through the waves and east of the city into the wilderness. On a first reading, it looks like another use of this common literary shape in the Old Testament: salvation through the waters of death and the wilderness of…
“Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” The unknowing master of ceremonies didn’t know how right he was. We see this play out in John’s apocalypse. The end is like the beginning,…
Read in isolation, The Test of Adultery (Num 5:11-31) presents the reader with a seemingly bizarre ritual, conjuring up ideas bordering on the Salem Witch Trials. Beyond this, pressing questions linger—such as, “Why is the woman in particular singled out, while no test is provided for the husband of a…
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“Typology is the map of time.” Pastor Rich Bledsoe discusses typology and time at the Trinity House web site.
The latest in Pastor Ralph Smith’s essays on Deuteronomy is available at the Trinity House web site.
Let us pray. Father, You raised Your Son from the dead and installed Him as Lord and Christ. Fill us with the Spirit of His resurrection, that we present ourselves to You as those alive from the dead and our members as instruments of righteousness. Through our Lord Jesus Christ.…
Let us pray. Father, we gather this night in hope that You will dispel our every darkness by the glorious resurrection of Jesus Your Son. Raise us and make us shine with the brightness of Your glory. Through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you…
Bauman ( Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality , 148-50 ) notes that in the past public executions and blood sports “were rare, festive and party-like occasions,” within the realm of Bakhtin’s “carnival culture - the periodical spectacular reversals of the daily norms” that underscored “the binding routine of…
Modernity, says Zygmunt Bauman ( Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality , 139-40), is a “civilization of transgression .” Citing Krzysztof Pomian, he says that in modernity “borders are there sole to be transgressed” and “does not just tolerate transgressions as far as they remain marginal; it provokes them.”…
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