Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In Genesis One, God told Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Gen. 1:28). In Christian worldview…
"And I also way to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it" (Matthew 16:18). Matthew 16:13ff. has historically been one of the most oft-cited passages of Scripture. Throughout the Middle Ages, it was used…
One of the important themes of the synoptic gospels is Jesus’ rejection of Israel and the transfer of God’s favor to the New Israel, the Church. A clear statement of this theme is found in the parable of the vineyard owner in Matthew 21:33-46. Jesus explained the meaning of the…
11. There is a type of person [a generation] who curses his father, And does not bless his mother. 12. There is a type who is pure in his own eyes, Yet not washed from his filthiness [manure]. 13. There is a type — oh how lofty are his eyes!…
Under the Levitical law, whole-burnt offerings from the herd and flock had to be male. No such specification is made with respect to birds (cf. Lev. 5:7-10). Why did the Lord demand that only males be offered as whole-burnt offerings? The easy answer is that the whole-burnt offering typified Christ,…
Matthew 2:13-23 has a tripartite structure, reporting briefly three events of the early years of Jesus’ life. Matthew ends his narrative of each event with a "fulfillment formula." Jesus’ flight to Egypt and His Exodus back into Israel was a fulfillment of Hosea’s words, "Out of Egypt I call my…
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Judith Gundry's contribution to The Child in the Bible examines the place of children in Mark's gospel, with particular focus on the episode of Jesus blessing the children. It's an illuminating essay. Mark includes no infancy narratives, but regularly shows Jesus exerting the power of the kingdom to rescue and…
In his Happiness Paradox , Ziyad Marar explores the sources of "justification." Humiliation is a uniquely human form of suffering. How do we deal with it? Our strategies for staving off humiliation are strategies of "justification." Freud offers some possibilities, He "enumerates a range of ways we avoid this kind…
Virginia Woolf, atheist though she was, couldn't avoid religious language when she spoke about her writing. Writing began from "a revelation of some order; it is a token of some real thing behind appearances; and I make it real by putting it into words." It was her "shock-receiving capacity is…
Robert Brandom ( Tales of the Mighty Dead , 13-14) observes a continuity between Hegel and Kant: Both take concepts as "norms for judgment. They determine proprieties of application to particulars of terms that, because of the normative role they play in such judgments, express universals." But then Hegel adds…
Did the Council of Trent allow communion in both kinds, in bread and wine? The answer is complicated. Nathan Mitchell ( Oxford History of Christian Worship , 338-9) writes that "After intense behind-the-scenes negotiations, Pope Pius IV authorized communion in both species for German (16 April 1564). In effect, the…
Reviewing Carlos Eire's Reformations at First Things , Eamon Duffy claims that "Protestantism 'desacralized' the world by accepting an essentially binary division of reality into spirit and matter. That division was expressed in Reformation iconoclasm and the rejection of the notion that material objects—the bread and wine of the Mass,…
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