Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I was still a high school student the first time I read Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, but I will never forget the powerful impact the book had on me. Of course, as a second year student, I did not fully digest the book. In spite of subsequent readings, I…
Crises force questions of identity. Identities may remain assumed until some event, or series of events, challenge what may have been taken for granted. The search for identity is an anxious one precisely because it tends to happen in times of upheaval and uncertainty. In his recent book, Orthoxox Anglican…
Peter Leithart recently wrote a fascinating short piece about the Half Shekel Temple Tax as an atonement. Leithart argues three main points. First that the Sanctuary Shekel was heavier, i.e., more valuable than the everyday shekel. Second, he offers some analysis about the order of magnitude of the purchasing power…
There is no denial from the careful reader that 1 Samuel 24 and 26 are telling the same story. Perhaps we should say, virtually the same story. But that the stories are cut from the same cloth is undeniable. What we have over these three chapters—1 Samuel 24-26—is a very…
In his novel That Hideous Strength , C.S. Lewis is able to masterfully illustrate in narrative form so many of his insights about the subversive dangers of Leftist political dogma to Christian civilization. Perceptive essays from Lewis like “The Abolition of Man” and “The Inner Ring” are fleshed out in…
At a very practical level, the Evangelical Church has been injected with counterfeit spiritualities. We are a people looking for a city, whose builder may only be in office for four years. Our temptation to veer to the side of the temporal is striking in our day, especially as the…
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PROVERBS 25:27 Like Genesis 1-2, this section of Proverbs 25 establishes a rhythm of “good” and then declares something “not good.” “Good” it is to live in the corner of the roof, and “good” news refreshes the soul; but it is “not good” to eat too much honey. Chapters 24-25…
Geza Alfoldy concludes his Social History of Rome with suggestive comments about the relation of Christianity and the fall of the empire. The problem was not that Christianity undermined patriotism; it didn’t. Rather, “The role of Christianity in the collapse of the Roman system of power resulted from the fact…
Isaiah tells a tale of a vineyard (5:1-7), and then issues a series of woes (5:8-23) that culminates in a warning that a nation is going to be summoned to Judah (5:24-30). Jesus follows the same sequence: Parables of the vineyard in chapters 20-21 are followed by woes (ch. 23)…
PROVERBS 25:23 This verse gives us a translation issue in the first line. The NASB translates the line “The north wind brings forth rain,” but the KJV says that the north wind “drives away rain.” The verb in question has a range of applications and uses, but the basic idea…
Barton again: “The Romans’ expectations of the brave gladiator were identical to their expections of the sacrificial victim: the victim in a Roman sacrifice was led to the altar by a slack rope, in order that it might not seem to be dragged by force. Any show of resistance on…
From a 1989 article by CA Barton on gladiatorial games in Rome: When a gladiator entered the arena, “he took a frightful oath, the sacramentum gladiatorim ; he swore to endure being burned, bound, beaten, and slain by the sword . . . . He foreswore all that might ameliorate…
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