Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
There’s something about joy that is infectious. And occasionally, we all have the opportunity to be in someone’s presence who is so happily engaged in their work, so joyous in their pursuits, that we want to learn from them. We want to know where that joy comes from and attain…
Jesus has told us that He intends all nations to be discipled. Nations. Not just individuals. All nations as theocracies. That being the case, the Church exists for the life of the world. Being baptized is not only a matter of becoming part of a new family, it is also…
Harold Bloom’s essay on Macbeth includes the kind of penetrating insights that make Bloom the great Shakespearean scholar that he is, but it also includes his typical and intense anti-Christian bias. “If Lear was pre-Christian, then Macbeth is weirdly post-Christian. There are, as we have seen, Christian intimations that haunt…
Revelation 16 is a day of atonement text. The tabernacle of the testimony has been opened (15:5). The angels who receive the bowls are clothed in linen (15:6), the clothing of the high priest when he goes into the sanctuary on the day of atonement (Leviticus 16:4). The temple is…
From time to time, when I’ve lectured on how to read the Bible, I’ve used art-music as one example thereof. When we listen to a simple folk song, we hear the same melody over and over again, but this is not how composers write "high" music. Let me amplify. A…
"For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea-monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:40). Some reflections on Jonah’s Big Fish have led to the following essay. Let me…
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O’Donovan begins Desire of Nations with a discussion of post-Enlightenment criticism of authority, the unmasking of the self-interest of power that is at the heart of modern and post-modern thought. This unmasking, he says, originates in Christianity, but detached from theology and the church it has degenerated “into little more…
I’m no poet, but sometimes I feel poetic. What’s that feel like? It feels like, “I wish I were a poet so I translate that to language.” But there are a couple of other things going on too. One is a desire for explanation. When the spring breeze comes through…
An article of mine about the cross and what Paul calls the “powers” is posted on the First Things web site this morning: www.firstthings.com
Luther presents several arguments against the Roman Catholic claim that marriage is a sacrament. First, he claims that it doesn’t fit the definition of a sacrament, which includes a divine promise and a sign: “We said that there is in every sacrament a word of divine promise, to be believed…
Marriage was not considered a sacrament in the strict sense by the earliest church fathers or in medieval era. This is partly because there was no “sacrament” in the strict sense; the word was used loosely for “sacred signs.” Augustine described marriage as a “sacrament,” but he didn’t mean by…
INTRODUCTION Jesus begins His teaching ministry offering eightfold beatitude to Israel (Matthew 5:1-12); His teaching ministry ends with an eightfold woe against Jerusalem and a prophecy about the destruction of the temple (Matthew 23-25). Jesus’ life with Israel recapitulates Israel ’s history, which begins in exodus and ends with exile.…
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