Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
We lost Crimea. That is very clear. Putin proved he was not lying when he said he would place women and children ahead of his soldiers to storm Ukrainian military bases. Russian soldiers did exactly that with women (some who volunteered and some who were forced). Russia now occupies all…
Sound is an indicator of life and energy. “Sound signals the present use of power, since sound must be in active production to exist at all.” Things don’t have to be alive to make themselves visible, and “a primitive hunter can see, feel, smell, and taste an elephant when the…
In the most famous section of his best-known novel, Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov brings forward his case against God. He opens with a horrific litany of outrages against children. Turkish soldiers make a baby laugh and then shoot a pistol into his face. A little girl is beaten, thrashed, kicked by…
At the heart of Esther Lightcap Meek's splendid Little Manual for Knowing is a concept she picked up from Michael Polanyi, "subsidiary-focal integration." The concept begins from the insight that all our knowing, all our experience, is double. We focus on something, but we are capable of "indwelling" that focal…
Jesus promises the overcomers of Pergamum "hidden manna" and a "white stone." The hidden manna is often linked with the manna stashed away in the ark of the covenant. The white stone has proved more elusive. Exodus tells us that manna was white (Exodus 16:31) and like bdellium (Numbers 11:7),…
Leviticus 23 begins with a reference to “Yahweh’s appointed times” ( mo’ade-YHWH ). Mo’ed is the common term for the feasts of Israel. A few dimensions to this term. First, it means “appointed time” or “designated time.” It is a time set by Yahweh. Yahweh has claimed certain times as…
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One of Kant’s central contributions to philosophy was the invention of the notion of “critical philosophy,” which means epistemology, which means philosophy as a critique of knowledge. Philosophy is the queen of the sciences that polices the borders between sciences and keeps everyone safely in his or her own department.…
Paul D. Janz offers a favorable interpretation of Kantian epistemology in his God, the Mind’s Desire . Janz begins with an assessment of Kant’s project in the first Critique. It is, he points out, a Critique of Pure Reason , not a defense, yet in spite of this title and…
What is the problem Kant is trying to solve? Near at hand, there are a host of problems: He wants to respond to Hume’s skepticism; he struggles with the problem of evil; he wants to affirm the advances of Newton without sacrificing humanity and religion. But if we look in…
What is the problem Kant is trying to solve? Near at hand, there are a host of problems: He wants to respond to Hume’s skepticism; he struggles with the problem of evil; he wants to affirm the advances of Newton without sacrificing humanity and religion. But if we look in…
Kant is often accused of bringing an end to metaphysics. He didn’t think so: “Metaphysics, with which it is my fate to be in love, although only rarely can I boast of any favours from her, offers two advantages. The first is that it serves to solve the tasks which…
Nancey Murphy summarizes Kant’s argument that the cosmological argument reduces to the ontological in this way: “Suppose we can argue to the necessary existence of some x by showing that its existence is a necessary condition for the existence of all that we know to exist. How, then, to identify…
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