Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Genesis 3 ends on a decisive, and decisively negative, note. Yahweh “drove the man out” of the garden, and, in addition, “at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim, and the flaming sword which turned every direction, to guard the way to the tree of life.”…
When she died in 2005 at the age of 72, Anna Haycraft, the author who published under the name Alice Thomas Ellis, was a celebrated writer in Great Britain. While working at Duckworth Publishers(which her husband owned), she produced a dozen novels, a collection of short stories, a cookbook, volumes…
Some have suggested recently that my "project" is postmodern. To clarify my views on postmodernism, I'm re-posting something I wrote in 2005, with a few modifications. For a fuller discussion, you can check out my Solomon among the Postmoderns (Canon, 2008). First, it is helpful to distinguish, as many writers…
Calling Jerusalem the "holy city" comes so naturally to Christians that it comes as something of a surprise to realize how infrequently the phrase is used in Scripture. Not only is Jerusalem rarely called holy, but in the Old Testament this classification is found only in texts that refer to…
Asking why the church doesn’t sing hymns or even why men don’t sing in church is a bit like lamenting over the lame man who can’t waltz on the dance floor. While it is a valid question, the more immediate question would seem to be, “why doesn’t the lame man…
The theme of 1 Timothy is the distinction between the true children in the Household of God and false children who really belong to the household of Satan. This is seen in the fact that in the chiastic structure of the Epistle, heresy is the subject in the center (…
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R obert Solomon's The Joy of Philosophy is a defense of philosophy as a joyful wisdom, a la Solomon's philosophical hero, Nietzsche. Solomon knows that Nietzsche isn't even considered a philosopher by many: “His prose is too shimmering, too full of sarcasm and wise-cracks, too personal. He has too much…
F ew readers love Fanny Price. Some hate her as deeply as Mark Twain professed to hate her creator. CS Lewis had Screwtape call her “not only a Christian, but such a Christian—a vile, sneaking, simpering, demure, monosyllabic, mouselike, watery, insignificant, virginal, bread-and-butter miss . . . A two-faced little…
I n his Christian Ethics and the Church (67), Philip Turner provides a masterful summary of “the link Ephesians makes between the fulfillment of God's purpose, the perception of God's glory, and the common life of the assembly”: The members of God's assembly have been chosen ‘before the foundation of…
T wice in 1 Chronicles, David says he was prevented from building the temple because he shed “copious” blood (22:6–11; 28:2–7). The passages frame his final arrangements for the temple and his succession exhortations to Solomon. After analyzing the texts, Donald Murray concludes that “the core of [Yahweh's] objection to…
W illiam Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564. Baptized , but was he a Christian? The answer partly depends on what we think happens when someone is baptized. Many Christians believe that baptism marks the beginning of life as a Christian. I am one of those Christians. My short…
T he thesis of John Wright's 1993 essay on the Chronicler's account of David's census (1 Chronicles 21) is implausible. Commentators, he says, have read the Chronicler's narrative through the lens of 2 Samuel 24, which recounts the same event. Wright argues that the Chronicler doesn't retell the story of…
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