Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
This year’s Biblical Horizons conference was another great success and we would like to thank all those who were involved by helping out with the catering or opening up their homes to attendees and speakers. The talks, open-ended as they were, offered a fresh perspective and food for thought on…
I find myself often rehearsing conversations with my children. When the house is quiet in the late evening, and I'm standing in front of a pile of soapy dishes, I think about what I am going to say to them in certain situations. When I am driving in the car,…
In Matthew 24:29 , Jesus employs “cosmic language,” signs in the sun, moon and stars, to predict the imminent end of the Old Covenant. His first-century audience would have recognized His allusion to the prophecy against Babylon in Isaiah 13 and understood His discourse as a condemnation of Jerusalem as…
The Enthroned One speaks to John (Revelation 21:6): “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost.” It's a little theology proper. For starters, there's the Greek version of…
In reading about how we got into this mess, I came across a very interesting couple of paragraphs that I think the church could learn from if we are going to counter the Obergefell ruling. Prior to 2009, same sex “marriage” had gone to the ballot box thirty-one times in…
In my previous essay on Macbeth , I pointed out that Shakespeare rewrote Scottish history to construct a play which points to Adam’s Fall — a man and a woman tempted by devils to steal the throne and become like gods. It is hard to imagine anyone in Shakespeare’s day…
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Unpacking her patrilineal account of sacrifice, Nancy Jay notes offhandedly that the genealogy of Genesis 4-5 is “perfectly patrilineal. No women are named; wives are not even mentioned” ( Throughout Your Generations Forever , 96). It’s true. Women are pretty much invisible after Eve is named “Living one” and bears…
In a brilliant brief discussion of the Reformation revision of Christian sacramental theology, Philippe Buc ( Dangers of Ritual ) writes: “The Reformation’s success in sixteenth-century Europe can be explained partly by the skill with which its propagandists mustered against the Roman Church notions basic to the medieval definition of…
In his Inquiry into Modes of Existence , Bruno Latour imagines an anthropologist doing field work among the tribe of Science in their natural habitat, the lab. She has been told that the Modern world is separated into interrelated but distinct domains: “Law, Science, Politics, Religion, The Economy.” These must…
Bruno Latour ( An Inquiry into Modes of Existence ) says that “the entire modern experience has stood up against living under the control of an indisputable metadispatcher. No one can make us believe the contrary: we know that it is false ” (469). Except when it comes to economy.…
Paul continues to use the language of purity and impurity, but it seems radically altered in his hands. Foods are not unclean; there is no hint that bodily conditions (menstruation, childbirth, seminal emissions) cause uncleanness. Indeed, all things are pure (Romans 14:20). But Paul’s logic is a bit more complicated…
Johann Georg Hamann, the devout German philosopher of the Enlightenment age, argues that “a kind of ‘faith’ is involved in everyday life when we recognize the real.” In several places, Hamann attributed this insight to Hume. “The reasonings of a Hume ,” he wrote, “may be convincing and their refutations…
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