Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Place names become fraught with meaning by association with people and events. The name “Wittenberg” calls to mind Luther and the Reformation for Protestants and Catholics alike. Geneva has a wider range of associations, but the Reformation Wall, with its four main statues of William Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza,…
“…a mystery without a solution, a horror story without savagery, a nightmare in which all the watches stop at noonday…” The Bestial Gardens of Men Then they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!” (Luke 23:30) The following lines by Edgar Allan Poe,…
2 Samuel 11-12, which record David’s sin with Bathsheba and its aftermath, is structured chiastically: This arrangement highlights several things about the episode. It reinforces what is obvious from even a casual reading, that the transition in the story occurs with Nathan’s confrontation of David’s sin and David’s confession. Up…
Medieval bestiaries are packed with quaintly inaccurate information about animals, birds, and other created things. Foxes and snakes are devilish critters; stags, pelicans and elephants are Christlike in their various ways. Of course, the medievals picked this up from the Bible, where bestiary observations are fairly common. “Go to the…
What do Reformational Catholicism and craft beer have in common? The question seems to beg for a punchline. Better yet, it would be pretty good clickbait for an article on Katharina von Bora’s “spirited” contribution that helped spark the Protestant Reformation. Well, this is no joke and I am certainly…
Suffering Defined Suffering happens. We witness it all around us and experience it in our lives. It often comes from forces beyond our control. Suffering is inscrutable; it strikes unexpectedly, on a bright summer day or a cold winter night. We lament and are bewildered by suffering. But we are…
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The Incarnation of God by John Clark and Marcus Peter Johnson is an excellent book. This accessible book offers a mini-systematics from the perspective of the incarnation, showing how the incarnation affects our understanding of God and His attributes, atonement and salvation, church and sacraments. They end with a chapter…
T he dead have gone missing from the realm of the living,” observes Candi Cann in Virtual Afterlives (xi). “They are, like their memorials, repackaged, the very disjuncture of death denies in its most crucial moment.” Death has moved from the home and family to the hospital and the funeral…
William Viestenz's By the Grace of God joins a growing list of books that, invoking Carl Schmitt and others, argues that secular politics has never been secular, but always parasitic on sacred politics. Viestenz's book is not an exercise in theory, however, but a theoretically-attentive historical study of the Spain…
God Himself is a Giver of Gifts. His eternal life is a life of give and counter-gift. Our God is the giving God. We can start with James 1:5, 17. Verse 17 tells us that every good thing and every gift is ultimately from God, who gives relentlessly, without reproaching…
Human beings are made in the image of the giving God, and this suggests that giving, reception, and return are part of the cycle of human existence as well. Man is created as a recipient of gifts; Adam’s very existence is a gift that God is not constrained to give,…
We die to sin in baptism, Paul says. Liberated from sin, we are to devote the members of our bodies to God and His righteousness. We already participate in Jesus' resurrection; His resurrection power is already at work in our bodies (Romans 6). What might that mean? What does it…
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