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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Natural law arguments often conclude that every human being can know, without the help of revelation, that there is some deity, an ultimate reality, an absolute. Paul says that human beings know “about God” from creation, but also that they “knew God ” (Romans 1:19, 21)—that is, from creation they…
My latest First Things column sparked some reflections on apocalyptic politics from the Economist’s Erasmus columnist. He moves my observations about apocalyptic philosophy to apocalyptic politics. It comes up in all sorts of places. “Iran’s former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seemed obsessed with eschatology to a degree that irritated the country’s…
Roger Cohen is tired of Twitter bashers: “It’s not easy, being of a certain generation, to avoid the dinner conversation that veers into a lament about the short attention spans, constant device distraction, sad superficiality and online exhibitionism of a younger generation geared to life in 140 characters or less.…
“Work is charismatic,” writes Craig Keen in After Crucifixion (80-1). Keen elaborates in a beautiful passage: “What we are given to work upon precedes us, a gift sent our way the first five days of creation, the days when the Spirit hovered over the face of the waters, before our…
Progress, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy points out ( Christian Future ), was originally a plural term. “ Les progres ” was Condorcet’s phrase. What he had in mind were improvements, new gadgets and machines and gizmos. The singular form of the term came from early Christianity and referred to the spiritual improvement…
Sciences today often occupy ruts, separated from each other, each as incomprehensible to non-specialists as languages were at the tower of Babel, and separated too from the larger currents of culture. But it is a myth, Rosenstock-Huessy says ( Christian Future ), to believe that “sciences can advance without regard…
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