Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Stories, frankly all human stories are practically always about one thing aren’t they? Death. The inevitability of death. . . . “There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that happens to man is ever natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must…
Matthew is organized around 5 discourses, which trace out the history of Jesus as a recapitulation of the history of God and Israel in the Old Testament. Jesus first speaks as a new Moses, instructing His disciples on a mountain about a righteousness that surpasses the righteousness of the scribes…
The fall of the Sethites in Genesis 6 is the third fall of mankind, or the third degree of Adam’s original fall. Adam sinned in a Garden against his Father by stealing something he was supposed to wait to obtain. (“Every tree shall be food for you” Genesis 1:29.) Cain…
The recent fantasy film Noah and a slightly related blog comment by my friend Douglas Wilson have stirred up again the question of whether the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 who married the “daughters of men” were fallen angels or the priestly line of Seth. Doug argues for angels,…
The prophecy of Jude concerns apostasy. An illustration of apostasy and its consequences is found in verse 6, which the New American Standard Bible translates this way: "And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for…
At His death, Jesus is surrounded by a Roman centurion and his cohort of Gentile solders. Matthew doesn't say that any disciples are there. But women are, and so is Joseph of Arimathea, identified as a “disciple” but, as John tells us, a “secret disciple for fear of the Jews,”…
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Michael Hattaway writes, in an introduction to Early Modern English literature (Blackwell, 2005), “A primary difference between Renaissance and modern concepts of writing involves meanings for ‘literature’ and for ‘fiction.’ As surviving library catalogues reveal, contemporaries of Donne and Shakespeare did not recognize the groupings that determine the display of…
It’s significant that Jesus is said to “anoint” the blind man’s eyes with the clay-and-spittle (John 9:11). We wouldn’t normally think of clay as a promising material to “anoint” someone with, but this is the way that the man describes Jesus’ action. The word is often associated with the work…
In John 9, Jesus makes an allusion to the creation story when He explains to His disciples the reasons for the blind man’s blindness. The man is not blind because of his own sin, or his parents’ sins, but instead so that the work of God might be displayed in…
The “Middle Ages only had thumb screws, not the media.” -Karl Kraus, early 20th century Viennese writer
During the seventeenth century, the church grew rapidly in China. According to Chan Kei Thong, “In 1640, three decades after [Matteo] Ricci died, there were 60,000 to 70,000 Catholic converts; by 1651, their numbers had more than doubled to 150,000. By 1664, the figure had ballooned to at least 254,980.…
During the reign of Tang, the founder of the Shang Dynasty (1766 B.C.), China suffered a seven-year drought. Someone suggested that a human sacrifice was necessary. Chan Kei Thong tells the story: “Tang appointed a day for this to be done, and a great multitude gathered for the unprecedented event.…
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