Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Inspired by the “Moscow Mood” Debate In a shocking 1961 study, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram would don an official-looking white lab coat and tell a volunteer to administer increasing shocks to another “volunteer” in an adjacent room strapped into an “electric chair” just out of sight. The shocks were incrementally…
My title and the substance of the article are borrowed from a section of David Wenham’s excellent book, Paul: Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity? I am appropriating ideas from the pages in his book which address the question, “Why Does Paul refer to Jesus’ Life and Ministry so…
Some of us may be familiar with the notion that the epistle of James is like a New Testament version of Proverbs or other wisdom literature. According to this line of thinking, the epistle of James (together with the other wisdom literature) is basically a collection of timeless sayings without…
This summer I started walking a long trail that ran north from our home. On my best days, I would walk a total of five miles at a brisk pace. This trail follows the power lines that serve a significant portion of North Dallas and stretches far past the two…
I am an Australian. I went to the American Academy of Religion mega-fest last year to meet up with some friends, to present a paper at a ‘science and religion’ panel, and to marvel at the sheer scale of how Americans do things. It was quite a ride. Looking at…
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 We evangelicals do not often understand the roles of men and women in ministry. Because our consumerist culture has gutted the notion of family as it was historically understood, all Biblical passages about women in church ministry (a familial organism) are almost incomprehensible to…
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“Being lonely is a lot more worrying for your health than obesity,” writes Philippa Perry . She draws on research by John Cacioppo that shows that for the elderly “Feeling isolated from others can disrupt sleep, raise blood pressure, lower immunity, increase depression, lower overall subjective wellbeing and increase the…
Stephen Finlan ( The Background and Contents of Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors ) thinks that Paul mixes his metaphors: “Paul indicates that salvation is not free: ‘you were bought with a price’ (1 Cor 6:20; 7:23). Here, the Christian gets a new owner: Christ. The death of Jesus functioned as…
Jacob Milgrom argued that the notion that Yahweh was appeased by sacrificial aromas is rare, and that the notion that Yahweh fed on sacrificial food was found only in “rare linguistic fossils” ( Leviticus 1-16 , 250). Finlan ( Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors , 30) rightly protests: “Forty-two instances of…
Before assessing the Best Picture nominees at TNR , David Thomson reminds us what the Best Picture award is: “First of all, remind yourself that ‘Best Picture’ is not a certificate of value passed down by God. It is a construct, and a con, dreamed up by the American Academy…
Reviewing Colin Burrow’s Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity in the TLS , Michael Silk refers to Dante’s debt to Virgil, and then observes: “There is surely no counterpart to this in the case of Shakespeare - though one might perhaps consider it (Burrow himself doesn’t quite) in connection with Seneca.” He…
Tim Crane points out in his TLS review of John Caputo’s Truth that “Aristotelian” ideas of truth are in no way incompatible with the insight that there is a plurality of perspectives on truth: “to believe in truth in this [Aristotelian] sense is not to believe that there is only…
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