Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Mark Horne has done a good job elucidating how martyrdom paves the way for revival and success of Christ’s kingdom in the world, just as it also can bring more hardship and suffering. The diverging wheat and tares both growing up together, both benefitting from the watering of blood on…
For Part 1, click HERE . Anyone who has read James B. Jordan’s Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World and appreciated it as a revelation of how God communicates in symbols and types—both in His Word and in the created order—understands what it is like to…
Abel was the first martyr in history. There is no evading this. Jesus pairs him with a murdered prophet (Matthew 23:35; 2 Chronicles 24:20-22). Abel’s blood was heard by God (Genesis 4:10), and God responded to the cry by driving out Cain, Abel’s killer, from the eastern borderland near Eden…
Adapted from The Shape of Isaiah: A Covenant-Literary Analysis The prophetic texts are the most difficult parts of the Bible to understand. And when it comes to baffling the reader, they are no respecter of persons, perplexing with their Delphic wiles even the studied scholars. It has been said that…
The subtitle for the 2004 film Dodgeball is “A True Underdog Story.” If the viewer lets the words pass by without a double-take, he or she will likely spend the rest of the movie, which applies the “unlikely teammates make the best teams” trope to the “sport” of dodgeball, asking,…
The book of Ezra gives an almost odd amount of attention to vessels. These holy vessels, whether cups, bowls, or flagons, are either dedicated as tribute or were used in temple service. The two Hebrew words translated as ‘vessel’ in most English translations are used a total of 14 times.…
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Bowersock contrasts the stance of Christians and Jews toward the Greco-Roman world: “it was precisely the Christians’ vigorous participation in the civic life and intellectual traditions of the Graeco-Roman world that grounded their martyrdoms in the life of the great cities. The Jews, by contrast, had conspicuously chosen a different…
GW Bowersock ( Martyrdom and Rome (Wiles Lectures) ) cites an article by Louis Robert to explain Perpetua’s vision at her martyrdom. She saw “a man of enormous height, whose head rises above the very top of the amphitheater itself, and whose clothes show purple garments not only falling from…
Jane Harrison begins her Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Mythos Books) with a quotation from Ruskin regarding the “genius of the Greeks”: “there is no dread in their hearts; pensiveness, amazement, often deepest grief and desolation, but terror never. Everlasting calm in the presence of all Fate, and…
David Gress’s excellent From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Opponents shows that classics programs, the discipline of classics, great books programs, are founded on a highly questionable “grand narrative” of Western civilization. According to this narrative, Western history is a series of magic moments, beginning…
Dio Cassius ( Roman History , 77.7) describes how Caracalla modelsed himself after Alexander the Great: “He was so enthusiastic about Alexander that he used certain weapons and cups which he believed had once been his, and he also set up many likenesses of him both in the camps and…
Kenneth Clark: “Facts become art through love, which unifies them and lifts them to a higher plane of reality.” Almost right, that. Right on the link between artifice (poetry, courtesy, ornamentation) and love. Right too on the unifying metaphoricity of art. Right too on the link of fact and art.…
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