Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The resurrection stories in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are among the strangest stories in all of the literature of the world, even among the strangest stories in the Bible. That is true of each Gospel’s accounts individually, but even more of the collection as a whole. On the one…
As a pastor, I’m interested in discipleship. Christians are called to be disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ. Discipleship has everything to do with the disciplines we walk by in our lives. Things like Bible reading, prayer, and fasting are hallmarks of standard Christian discipleship. The basic thrust is that…
Psalm 1 is justly famous among biblical texts. It opens the Psalter, it’s a paean to the life-giving power of the Law, and it beautifully describes righteous life as a stable, fruitful tree. It subtly weaves the contrasting threads of wickedness and righteousness into a succinct summary of biblical wisdom:…
No book is more quoted in Hebrews than the Psalter: there are quotations and allusions to psalms on virtually every page. And many of the quotations are not passing references but closely considered and repeatedly cited as the author of Hebrews develops his central arguments. Much of Hebrews is exposition…
Howard Bloom is a beautiful hypocrite. The author of books in as different subjects as Mohammed, scientific theory, and the cultural upheaval of the 1960s, he professes to be a “stone cold atheist.” Yet in spite of that profession, Bloom obviously writes as a Jew; that is, he writes with…
There may be some debate about who deserves the title “the King of American literature,” but, at least to my mind, there should be no debate over who deserves to be “the Queen” – let’s give the crown to Flannery O’Connor. She is, however, a very unlikely queen. Unlikely, not…
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James says that the law is a mirror. We think he means that we read the law, it shows us flaws and blemishes, and we are convicted of sin. That’s not the way the image works in James. The man who looks in a mirror and turns away is not…
Julian “the Apostate” saw how the Christian church grew “due to philanthropy to strangers, burial of the dead and seeming purity of life.” Pagans needed to catch up, and this meant charity: “In every city,” he ordered, “numerous hostels should be established that strangers, whether or not of our faith,…
No American writer of the last fifty years even approximated the luxuriance of John Updike. In its lengthy obit, the NYT cites this from an early short story: “Snow fell against the high school all day, wet big-flake snow that did not accumulate well. Sharpening two pencils, William looked down…
“One cannot serve God and the Emperor,” Tertullian wrote. Early Christians were anti-imperial then? Not necessarily. When Celsus charged that Christians would leave the Emperor alone against the barbarians, Origen protested: “We help the emperor in his extremities by our prayers and intercessions more effectively than do the soldiers. Just…
Early Christians did not call for abolition, and even after the empire became Christian much of the traditional Roman social structure remained in place. Yet, Hermann Dorries writest that Christianity provided Constantine and the Christian emperors who followed with “the possibility of gradual amelioration.” Considering the central economic importance of…
In his first interview as President, Obama told Al-Arabiya that America needs to learn to listen because “all too often the United States starts by dictating.” Does anyone honestly believe that American diplomats go into the Middle East and starts by ordering everybody around? Of course, US diplomats have a…
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