Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
[This essay was originally published in 1988. Given the situation that our new national socialists are getting the world into, I thought it might be useful to reprint it here. – JBJordan] The Bible has quite a bit to say about gold, silver, and precious stones, and the Bible always…
I wrote this elsewhere and was encouraged to put it here. It is a comment on what a pastor is. Today, this is not very well understood, and God’s people suffer because of it. There are four professions: medicine, education, law, and religion. Each of these, when done at a…
James Jordan recently pointed out in private conversation how appropriate it is, in John’s Gospel, that Nicodemus is present both to ask Jesus about being born again, and to see Jesus re-enter the womb of the mother. Nicodemus rhetorically asks, “How can a man be born when he is old?…
This is a problematic and much discussed passage. I’ve been discussing it in another forum, and have decided to move it here and present some very preliminary observations about it. One large question is this: Who is the speaker here and what is his situation? Traditionally, the speaker is seen…
1. The current issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction includes a good fantasy novella by John C. Wright, who since his conversion has been writing Christianly. This is a fine fantasy with nods to C. S. Lewis and Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and probably Gene Wolfe as well.…
“It is an experience of our days that the spoken name of Jesus alone exercises an unforeseen power; and the effort which it cost to speak this name is perhaps connected to some faint apprehension of the power which is inherent within it. Wherever the name of Jesus Christ is…
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Christopher Warner argues in The Augustinian Epic that Renaissance epic and medieval exegesis share two crucial features. First, both share an interest in history, but one that aims to peer behind the veil of fact into the allegorical meaning of facts. Petrarch’s epic of the Second Punic War and Tasso’s…
At the beginning of Revelation, the Spirit speaks to the seven churches. At the end, the voice of the bride and the voice of the Spirit become one, speaking a single wish: Come, Lord Jesus. By suffering with the Bridegroom, the bride learns His dialect. She becomes attuned to His…
Dennis Pardee’s Ritual and Cult at Ugarit collects texts that are relevant to Ugaritic cult, especially sacrificial cult. He ends the book with a helpful survey of the similarities and differences between Ugarit and the Bible. One of the differences has to do with the use of blood. “The blood…
The Lego movie has a cutting-edge social message, writes Ben Walters in The Guardian : “The film’s exuberant, kid-friendly larks – Wild West! Robot pirates! Unicorn kittens! Batman! – are laced with satirical digs at surveillance culture, built-in obsolescence and police brutality, as well as inane positive thinking. Its opening…
Gary Shteyngart writes in The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2007): “A knowledgeable Russian lazing around in the grass, sniffing clover and munching on boysenberries, expects that at any minute the forces of history will drop by and discretely kick him in the ass. “A knowledgeable Jew in a similar position expects…
Sean McDonough’s YHWH at Patmos (1999) is a 250+ page book about a single verse, Revelation 1:4. Really, only one phrase of that verse: “He who is and who was and who is coming.” McDonough traces the pre-history of the phrase to the name Yahweh. More surprisingly, he finds precedent…
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