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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Griffiths again ( Song of Songs (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible) , 62) on the “gazelle and hind” of the oath in Song of Songs 2:7. He connects this passage to the image of the hart longing for God in Psalm 42 “When the lovers like one another to…
Griffiths again ( Song of Songs (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible) , 60): “The placement of the adjuration formula is important. Here in 2:7 it concludes a series of endearment exchanges between the lover and the beloved (1:9-2:6). Those exchanges have a rhythm: they move from memory to yearning…
Working from the Vulgate text, Paul Griffiths ( Song of Songs (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible) , 59) has this helpful comment on the adjuration of the daughters of Jerusalem in Song of Songs 2:7: The “charge to [the daughters] can be read simply as an adjuration not to…
When Jacob arrives at Haran, Laban runs to meet him, embraces and kisses him, and welcomes him into the house (Genesis 29:13). When Jacob returns to the land, Esau runs to meet him, embraces and kisses him, and the two weep together (Genesis 33:4). Jacob’s exile is literarily embraced with…
In a 2010 article in the Lutheran Quarterly , Oswald Bayer examines the pre-ethical conditions for Christian ethics: “Over against a prescriptive overheating of ethics which has taken place since Kant, and the actualism and activism often bound up with this overheating, it is necessary to make clear the significance…
Lester Little again: “By a curious paradox, the most significant and lasting vestiges of monasticism occurred either where monasticism was totally wiped out or had never before existed; they are found in English and American colleges and in radical Protestant sects. The collegiate debt to monastic culture is most apparent…
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