Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Creationism is debated widely in the US, especially when it comes to teaching creation as an alternative theory of origins in public schools. Every few months, there’s another poll showing that many Americans still believe Ussher’s claim that the world was created around 4000 BC, which always elicits a contemptuous…
Walker Percy died in 1990, but his six published novels and his collections of essays are more relevant than when he wrote them. Percy was an American Dostoevsky, and that was no accident. “The European novels,” he says in a 1974 interview, “are more philosophical, more novels of ideas.” Dostoevsky,…
The Spirit is God’s agent for renewing the creation, for restoring bonds between nations, for knitting together people into the body of Christ. The Spirit is the renewer of the world, and the bond of all relations. That means that if you want your family to be knit together, if…
In their basic physical sense , the verbs translated as "persecute" in the Bible mean “chase” or “pursue,” and that fits the context quite naturally. As Pharaoh “pursued” (LXX, dioko ; Heb. radaph ) Israel into the wilderness, for example, so the dragon chases the woman back to her place…
Seng-Kong Tan’s Fullness Received and Returned is a densely argued, thoroughly researched, contextually sensitive study of participation in the soteriology of Jonathan Edwards. Along the way, Tan deals with many of the central themes in Edwards’s theology. As with many recent studies of Edwards, Tan’s monograph demonstrates both Edwards’s creativity…
The title of James Joyce’s first novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man indicates that it is a bildungsroman , a story of formation that describes the formative experiences of a poet who aspires to artistic greatness. The education described is Joyce’s own. The novel recounts the failing…
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In 1665, one Sabbatai Tsevi of Smyrna announced himself to the world as a Kabbalistic messiah who would bring in the final restoration ( tiqqun ). Yet, a year later, under a threat of execution from the sultan of Turkey, Tsevi converted to Islam. Instead of giving up their support…
In his Operation Shylock , Philip Roth’s double, Moishe Pipik (Yiddish for “Moses Bellybutton”), advocates a reverse Zionism known as Diasporism. He is encouraging Jews to return to Eastern Europe, and imagines that “People will be jubilant. People will be in tears. They will be shouting, ‘Our Jews are back!…
Some decades ago, James Barr criticized biblical scholars for a fallacy he labeled “illegitimate totality transfer.” By this phrase, Barr was referring to the habit of some biblical scholars to pack every possible meaning of a word into every context. Lane Keister’s ongoing critique of my work on justification charges…
Christian worship is God’s service to us. Yet, Christian worship is sacrificial, and sacrifice appears to be a human act reaching toward God. That’s certainly how Luther understood the sacrifice of the Mass. How to resolve? Teresa Okure, Professor of New Testament and Gender Hermeneutics (!) at the Catholic Institute…
An essay of mine on Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy is currently available on the First Things web site, here: http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/?p=786.
The NT uses the Greek word aggelia twice, both in 1 John (1:5; 3:11). The noun comes from the same root as euaggelion , good news, and Raymond Brown suggests that aggelia is the Johannine equivalent - meaning “good news” or “gospel. If this is true, 1 John’s two uses…
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