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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The Lamb receives a scroll that is sealed with seven seals (Revelation 5). One by one, He breaks the seals, and but that un-sealing climaxes with a sealing: During the sixth seal, an angel seals 144,000, 12,000 from twelve tribes (Revelation 7). The literary pattern reinforces this movement. The word…
Joseph is the bow-tribe, according to Genesis 49:23-24: Though attached by archers, his hands are strong to respond. Psalm 78:9 tells us that Ephraim, the largest sub-tribe of Joseph, is also a tribe of bowmen. But, referring to a battle recorded in Judges 20, the Psalm indicates that Ephraim’s bowmen…
“Stars are suddenly formed in the heavens themselves,” Pliny writes in his Natural History (II.22). “Of these there are various kinds.” He goes on to enumerate them: “The Greeks name these stars comets ; we name them Crinitæ, as if shaggy with bloody locks, and surrounded with bristles like hair.…
Adam Johnson’s God’s Being in Reconciliation examines the work of Karl Barth in order to show how “Barth’s understanding of God’s triune being-in-act . . . provides the proper theological framework for developing the doctrine of the atonement” (10). Johnson argues that earlier studies of the Trinitarian framework for atonement…
Artists can be awfully protective of their work. In his forthcoming Copyright Wars , Peter Baldwin observes that Samuel Beckett “objected . . . when directors performed his plays with women, non-white casts, or incidental music. He sued the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge for playing Endgame in an abandoned…
As long as he’s in heaven preying on the child of the woman, he is called “dragon” (Revelation 12). Once cast down, his titles multiply: The dragon is also the archaic serpent, called the devil and Satan. A fourfold name for the “ruler of this world” who is cast out…
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