Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Paradosis Center at John Brown University in Siloam Spring, Arkansas, put on its first conference last week, it was a remarkable event. It was an ecumenical conference including Orthodox (John Behr, Edith Humphrey, others), Catholic (Rusty Reno, Michael Root, others), and Evangelical (Timothy George, David Lyle Jeffrey). Unusually for…
Naphtali Meshel observes in his new The "Grammar" of Sacrifice that scholars have been talking for decades about the "grammatical" character of ritual and sacrifice in general, but have never actually analyzed a specific ritual or sacrificial system grammatically. Some even talk about a "universal grammar" of sacrifice "even though…
Some Christians are rather breezy about the problem of evil. We shouldn't be. Do I need to remind you of the grisly beheadings that have taken place over the past few weeks? Do I need to remind you of the blood of innocents that’s been spilled in our own country?…
Have you ever been to a wedding where the heavens opened and a voice declared the couple “husband and wife”? Few of us have. Beautiful as they are, most marriages are quite mundane. Yet when Jesus talks about marriage, He describes it as something that God does: “What God has…
Jesus is the last and greatest of the Prophets. He is the Prophet that Moses predicted (Deuteronomy 18). That means He gives the final word, brings the blueprints for the final temple, speaks the final world into existence, and has complete and permanent access to the divine court, where He…
Paul stands against those who are “troubling” or “disturbing” the Galatians churches ( tarasso ; 1:7; also in 5:10). The reference seems to be two great troublers from the Old Testament. First, Achan is described as a “troubler” for the problems he causes in the aftermath of the battle at…
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Yuri Slezkine opens his book, The Jewish Century (11-12), with the arresting claim that "The Modern Age is the Jewish Age, and the twentieth century, in particular, is the Jewish Century. " He makes good on the claim with brief glimpses of what makes modernity modern. Modernization is itself "about…
Pierre-Simon Ballanche (1776-1847) is hardly a household name today, but he was a significant literary figure in 19th-century France. Albert Joseph George calls him a " precursor to romanticism ," and he was an eccentrically Christian advocate for social reforms of various kinds. In his Ville des expiations , unpublished…
We all know the story. Wise men come from the east, following a star to Jerusalem. They tell King Herod they’re looking for the “king of the Jews.” Like the rest of Jerusalem, Herod is troubled, not thrilled, by the news. To Herod, another king must be a rival for…
The Chronicler leaves out all the juicy stories of David's career - some of his major battles, his youthful heroism, Saul's persecution, adultery, murder, household disintegration. David isn't perfect , but he's cleaned up enough to join respectable company. Mark Thronveit asks whether the Chronicler is a "spin doctor." He…
We live in an Age of Anger , writes Pankaj Mishra. He sees it everywhere: "wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, suicide bombings in Belgium, Xinjiang, Nigeria and Turkey, insurgencies from Yemen to Thailand, massacres in Paris, Tunisia, Florida, Dhaka and Nice. Conventional wars between states are dwarfed by…
George Monbiot notes the individualization of entertainment ( Out of the Wreckage ): "Television, while it tended to shut down conversation, at least was something that we watched, in the early days, together. Now we often watch is alone. We spend hours every day watching other people doing what we…
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