Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
"Vanity of vanities", says the Preacher. "All is vanity". Life, we are told in the book of Ecclesiastes, is a repetitious, wearisome cycle; all that is and all that will be has already been. There is nothing new under the sun. What is crooked cannot be made straight, what is…
The Bible tells us that when God created the earth, He set up three zones of life. The first was the world itself. The second was the holy land of Eden. And the third was the Garden in Eden, God’s sanctuary. God told Adam and Eve that every tree was…
In our survey of Biblical chronology we have arrived at the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, which provide chronological information for the period after the return from exile, the Restoration Period of Old Testament history. The question we begin to address in this essay is whether the Artaxerxes of these…
These verses from the Sermon on the Mount are generally taken in connection with Jesus’ earlier statement concerning adultery in the heart (vv. 27-28); the eye and the hand have obvious relevance to the sin of adultery. At the same time, most commentators admit that the principle of avoiding occasions…
17. The eye that mocks a father, And despises to obey a mother, The ravens of the valley will pick it out, And the young eagles will eat it. 18. There are three things that are too wonderful for me, Four that I do not understand: 19. The way of…
The modern Church in America and virtually everywhere else is ideology-centered, not geographical. This is because various Churches believe different things and have different customs of worship and sacraments. The ideological Church has gradually developed from the time of the Reformation, because accuracy of doctrine has become more important to…
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In a typically dense article in a volume of essays on William Desmond, Milbank suggests that both Darwin and 18th-century design theories were operating with similar post-Scotist and Newtonian notions of God’s relation to the world. He sees a quite direct analog between the development of Darwinian theory and Newtonian…
Radical Orthodox theologians interacted with Process Theologians at an AAR session. Milbank gave an off the cuff response to the process theologians, starting with common interests among them, which he said were greater than he expected. Among them was their common resistance to the anti-metaphysical trends of modern philosophy, particularly…
Charles Taylor, the 2007 Templeton Prize winner, gave an excellent, though unfortunately poorly miked, lecture at AAR. His theme was “religious mobilization,” which he introduced first by discussing the peculiar modern phenomenon of “political mobilization.” Political mobilization means activating passive political actors. As Taylor developed this notion, he said that…
N. T. Wright has been getting heat for expressing his political opinions of late, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from his SBL address on “God in Public.” In the event, I found very little to disagree with, much to affirm heartily, and, as always with Wright, much to…
Virginia Postrel has a characteristically informative and entertaining piece on standardized clothing sizes in the December issue of The Atlantic. Clothing sizing, she says, began in the mid-twentieth century when “the U.S. government established and maintained size guidelines, using data from about 16,500 women, including 6,500 members of the women’s…
Ezra Pound wrote, “The individual cannot think and communicate his thought, the governor and legislator cannot act effectively or frame his laws without words, and the solidity and validity of these words is in the care of the damned and despised literatti - when their very medium, the very essence…
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