Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I think I want to respectfully disagree with Doug Wilson here . I understand him to be saying that if a candidate for elective office won that office through election fraud, that he would not really hold that office even if he was installed. I don’t have any comment to…
When I was a young girl, each Christmas my grandmother would send us a sweet little ornament to hang on the tree. I still have many of those ornaments decorating my home. For a few years in a row, she selected ornaments with people from around the globe smiling or…
I am a man. I came from a man. I have been around many men. I read books about men. Occasionally I have the opportunity to directly disciple men. And now that I have a son I have the great responsibility of teaching him to be a man. One may…
It seems at least sane to believe that past societies experienced upheaval and disarray quite like what we are experiencing today. Perhaps we are witnessing something altogether new or greater in degree than what peoples witnessed in the past, but it doesn’t seem likely. History is filled with fissures and…
“But for those of us to whom urban life is necessary and who cannot forego eating men, it is to our advantage to frequent the countries where one finds the most of them.” -Rousseau At All Saints Anglican in Honolulu, where I serve as rector, it has been our practice…
The Scriptures are replete with stories of deception. And often, strangely, it is those who we regard as righteous who are doing the deceiving. And, even more strangely, their deception is often rewarded, or even praised. Consider Jacob, Tamar, the Egyptian midwives, Rahab, to name just a few. Frustratingly for…
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Boaz is the type of the bridegroom who marries Ruth in order to raise up a seed for the old and widowed Naomi. James Jordan says Ruth is a substitute bride, because the firstborn seed is her seed, and leads to the redeemer that comes into the world. Typologically: The…
According to Oliver O’Donovan, Book 19 of City of God “is, at the very least, an essay to demonstrate that moral philosophy must be social philosophy.” The highest good for Augustine is the peace of the city of the blessed, and this is an inherently social reality. Since virtuous action…
Reflecting on Simmons’s stimulating article on Malvolio: He points out that by the 1590s, Sabbatarianism had become what Christopher Hill characterized as a shibboleth of Puritanism. Yet, at the time of Shakespeare’s play, Puritanism had also become popularly associated with hostility to jollity and festivity. Make all necessary allowances for…
Malvolio is expressly described as a “Puritan” in Twelfth Night , and the description is apt given Malvolio’s stern hostility to frivolous entertainments. Shakespeare is offering a parody of Puritan opposition to the theater. The satire is sharp: Puritans were opposed to the cross dressing inherent in Elizabethan theater (boys…
Boaz calls Ruth “my daughter,” even when they are lying together at night with Boaz’s feet uncovered. The whole book is about the levirate institution, and refracts again and again off the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38. Ruth is a new Tamar, who was “more righteous” than…
At the beginning of Ruth 4, Boaz takes a seat at the gate, the place of courts and judgments. The nearer kinsman happens by, and Boaz greets him. Lawson Younger points out that the common translation of his greeting, “friend,” doesn’t capture the Hebrew, which is a farrago, a nonsense…
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