Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Midwives are rarely mentioned in Scripture, but play a prominent role in the first chapter of Exodus. The word midwife is used seven times in verses 15-22, though it is used only twice elsewhere in the Old Testament. The reason, I think, is not merely that the midwives were heroic…
Leviathan (41:1-11) is the climax of the theophany, the culmination of the Lord’s speech. His final answer to Job’s injudicious charges against God’s justice. After hearing God rehearse the characteristics of Leviathan and His absolute power over him, Job instantly repents in dust and ashes. He confesses, "I know now…
Our purpose in this study is to lay out the chronology and history of the Kingdom of Judah from the reign of King Josiah to the completion of the exile of the Jews under Nebuchadnezzar, with particular attention to the events recorded in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The Empire of Assyria…
Protestants have always insisted that the sacraments bring no benefit without a response of faith, but this seems to undermine infant baptism, since infants do not appear to be able to exercise faith. Luther and Calvin held together their insistence on faith with infant baptism by claiming that infants can…
Traditional Presbyterian theologians regularly cite 1 Corinthians 11:28 as an argument against the practice of paedocommunion. Children must be able “to examine themselves” before they come to the table. Supposedly this text demands a certain level of intellectual capability as well as the capacity to engage in self-conscious introspection, both…
Yahweh’s two speeches at the end of the book of Job (38-41) should bring some closure to the book. The prologue has the whole cosmic order arrayed against the blameless and upright Job, "a man who feared God and shunned evil" (1:1, 8; 2:3). Yahweh’s capstone speeches affirm God’s absolute…
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Postmodern thinkers like Zygmunt Bauman have pointed to the “liquidity” of contemporary life, its shape-shifting instability. We have nothing on Bonaventure and other medieval doctors, for whom creation was a river flowing from a Triune source. Zachary Hayes ( The Gift of Being: A Theology of Creation (New Theology Studies)…
Over at The Guardian , Andrew Brown reports on the surprising strength of Calvinism in China. He cites Dr. May Tan of Singapore who predicts that Calvinism is becoming “an elite religion in China.” The reason, Tan says, is that Calvinism has a theology of resistance. Brown writes, “The great…
Peter Leithart is one of those exceptional teachers who instills not merely his knowledge in his students, but a bit of himself as well—his patient character, his charitable and jovial spirit, his boundless curiosity—so that they are never quite the same. He always acts as both a pastor and a…
In his Philosophy and Its Others (Suny Series in Systematic Philosophy) , William Desmond commends on the self-definition of clothing: “Clothes are not simply artificial protection against the unruly elements to compensate for bald bodies. They may define a kind of self, may communicate the color of a personal presence.…
In his essay “Violence and Metaphysics” in Writing and Difference , Derrida summarizes Levinas’s claim that metaphysics is a pursuit of totality, of totalizing explanations, that invariably involves conceptual and real violence. Being is not so because it “commands nothing or no one.” He elaborates: “As Being is not the…
In his fine treatment of Jacques Derrida: Live Theory , James K.A. Smith assesses Derrida’s debt to Marx. Despite owing a real debt, Smith notes that there is “a fundamental logic of dissociation at work in Derrida’s ‘spirit of Marxism’ whereby he distances himself from the doctrines and dogmatics of…
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