Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
After Elijah’s battered and depressed howling in the wilderness it must have seemed like the new prophet came eating and drinking. Which is a pattern we see again in the New Testament—John is explicitly identified with Elijah (Luke 1.17, Matthew 11.14), howling the truth in the wilderness that the people…
Reading Robert Conquest’s biography of Stalin 1 has opened new lines of meditation on Paul’s command in Colossians 3:9. But before turning to that, let me briefly indicate what Paul is not saying. He is not saying that there is no such thing as righteous deception, such as Jael practiced…
You won’t find wild lions today in Israel. But lions used to range much more widely than they do now, and in biblical times they were a menace that shepherds in Israel had to contend with. David did as a shepherd boy, and Amos—who “ was among the sheepbreeders of…
I would like to remedy a flaw for English speakers in the book of Genesis. A flaw that may seem innocuous, but we must remember where the devil lives...in the details. If we are to fear the Lord, it behooves our translation committees to ensure that the fearfulness of God…
While reading at my son’s baseball game this week, a mom from our school approached me and asked if I was reading Dante. I wasn’t, but our sons are both reading Divine Comedy in their sophomore literature class, so it was a reasonable question. What unfolded was a quick conversation…
In the first two essays in this series, I addressed the question of how the nations would learn about Israel’s Torah, in the second essay especially emphasizing the aesthetic aspects of Israel’s testimony. For we naturally wonder: How would people in Mesopotamia or Egypt, not to mention the rest of…
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T his is old news, but still: In late 2016 Science News reported on the work of archeologist and epigraphy Douglas Petrovich, who claims that “Israelites living in Egypt transformed that civilization’s hieroglyphics into Hebrew 1.0 more than 3,800 years ago, at a time when the Old Testament describes Jews…
F rom a TLS piece published late last year (I've unfortunately and inexplicably lost the reference): It's striking how many of those associated with Bloomsbury articulated the idea that houses, as well as being shaped physically by the tastes and attitudes of those who live in them, also possess a…
C olin Firth's dive into Pemberly's pond is either the highlight or the lowlight of the epic A&E P&P . For newbies, it's a a highlight; for purists, it represents a capitulation to the standards of contemporary romance and it's not even in the book ! Alana Semuels presents a…
A decade ago, self-proclaimed “born-again pagan” and New Yorker-proclaimed “Sage of Yale Law” Anthony Kronman responded to critics in Comment with this: What did Nietzsche mean when he said, “God is dead?” He meant that the idea of a world beyond this one, from whose vantage point everything here “down…
In an essay on God's attributes ( Christian Dogmatics , 65-6) argues, rightly, that God's attributes are “shaped by God's triune nature.” Aseity, for instance, “must be teased out in a trinitarian fashion It is not the case that God is Stoic needlessness, or that God is self-causal force. Rather,…
T he similarities between Israel and paganism have vexed, tantalized, and intrigued Christian thinkers for millennia. It was a central issue in the apologetic writings of the early church, and from the patristic through the medieval period Christian intellectuals attempted to fit paganism within the framework of redemptive history. I…
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