Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Optimism is “an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome.” 1 On the other hand, pessimism is “an inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities or to expect the worst possible outcome.” We can see that optimism and…
If we wish to understand the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we must begin with seeing them as a part of the creational order. Trees, along with plants and seed-bearing things, come to life by the word of God as part of…
“I chant slips and irreversible disasters, wiltings, failures, scars, the little disappointments and the large, blue streaks down a world that wishes it was only suncolors.” Paul J. Pastor from Kintsugi Song I recently lost something very valuable. Something I’d had for years and used every day. But, it wasn’t…
In his eponymous book, Jonah follows an exodus pattern. He travels through the waves and east of the city into the wilderness. On a first reading, it looks like another use of this common literary shape in the Old Testament: salvation through the waters of death and the wilderness of…
“Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” The unknowing master of ceremonies didn’t know how right he was. We see this play out in John’s apocalypse. The end is like the beginning,…
Read in isolation, The Test of Adultery (Num 5:11-31) presents the reader with a seemingly bizarre ritual, conjuring up ideas bordering on the Salem Witch Trials. Beyond this, pressing questions linger—such as, “Why is the woman in particular singled out, while no test is provided for the husband of a…
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The Incarnation of God by John Clark and Marcus Peter Johnson is an excellent book. This accessible book offers a mini-systematics from the perspective of the incarnation, showing how the incarnation affects our understanding of God and His attributes, atonement and salvation, church and sacraments. They end with a chapter…
T he dead have gone missing from the realm of the living,” observes Candi Cann in Virtual Afterlives (xi). “They are, like their memorials, repackaged, the very disjuncture of death denies in its most crucial moment.” Death has moved from the home and family to the hospital and the funeral…
William Viestenz's By the Grace of God joins a growing list of books that, invoking Carl Schmitt and others, argues that secular politics has never been secular, but always parasitic on sacred politics. Viestenz's book is not an exercise in theory, however, but a theoretically-attentive historical study of the Spain…
God Himself is a Giver of Gifts. His eternal life is a life of give and counter-gift. Our God is the giving God. We can start with James 1:5, 17. Verse 17 tells us that every good thing and every gift is ultimately from God, who gives relentlessly, without reproaching…
Human beings are made in the image of the giving God, and this suggests that giving, reception, and return are part of the cycle of human existence as well. Man is created as a recipient of gifts; Adam’s very existence is a gift that God is not constrained to give,…
We die to sin in baptism, Paul says. Liberated from sin, we are to devote the members of our bodies to God and His righteousness. We already participate in Jesus' resurrection; His resurrection power is already at work in our bodies (Romans 6). What might that mean? What does it…
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