Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
There’s something about joy that is infectious. And occasionally, we all have the opportunity to be in someone’s presence who is so happily engaged in their work, so joyous in their pursuits, that we want to learn from them. We want to know where that joy comes from and attain…
Jesus has told us that He intends all nations to be discipled. Nations. Not just individuals. All nations as theocracies. That being the case, the Church exists for the life of the world. Being baptized is not only a matter of becoming part of a new family, it is also…
Harold Bloom’s essay on Macbeth includes the kind of penetrating insights that make Bloom the great Shakespearean scholar that he is, but it also includes his typical and intense anti-Christian bias. “If Lear was pre-Christian, then Macbeth is weirdly post-Christian. There are, as we have seen, Christian intimations that haunt…
Revelation 16 is a day of atonement text. The tabernacle of the testimony has been opened (15:5). The angels who receive the bowls are clothed in linen (15:6), the clothing of the high priest when he goes into the sanctuary on the day of atonement (Leviticus 16:4). The temple is…
From time to time, when I’ve lectured on how to read the Bible, I’ve used art-music as one example thereof. When we listen to a simple folk song, we hear the same melody over and over again, but this is not how composers write "high" music. Let me amplify. A…
"For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea-monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:40). Some reflections on Jonah’s Big Fish have led to the following essay. Let me…
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D avid's plan for the temple is partly a floor plan. He gives Solomon the pattern for the “porch” and its associated buildings, treasuries, rooms, courts (1 Chronicles 28:11-12). The plan also includes instructions for organizing the priests and Levites (28:13a) and for the utensils of service for the temple…
I n his recently-published The Great Leveller , Walter Scheidel summarizes evidence from archeology and anthropological studies to answer the question, Has inequality always been with us? The answer is: Sort of yes. Inequality is a constant in societies that farm and herd. But farming and land ownership weren't the…
D avid gives Solomon the “plan” (Heb. tabnit ) for the temple. Unlike Moses, David doesn't have to climb a mountain to get it (cf. Exodus 25:9, 40). It comes from “the spirit ( ruach ) with him” (1 Chronicles 28:12), and from a “writing” from the Lord that comes…
I n an essay in the journal European Legacy , Norman Fiering summarizes the thought of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy on biography. Fiering asks whether there are recurring patterns in the lives of significant individuals, and, relying on Rosenstock-Huessy, calls attention to moments of “conversion” (not necessarily religious) and “grace” (unexpected encounters…
I n his 1971 study of Modernist architecture, The Golden City , Henry Hope Reed observed that Modernists transferred moral categories to architecture. Buildings could be “honest” (if they revealed their structure on the surface) or “false” (if they hid structure under ornamentation). Purity was invoked regularly as a positive…
W hat is “the Gothic”? Answers vary, and that is, Catherine Spooner argues (in Post-Millennial Gothic ), because Gothic bears “multivalent meanings” and “has adapted and changed with the times” (9–10). This isn't a recent development: “After Gothic's initial phase of popularity fizzled out around 1820, it quickly renewed itself…
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