Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the beginning, this was home. The world, I mean. Creation wasn’t just a series of unconnected events, a flashy display of building prowess. Yes, creation was intended to give God glory—which I guess you could say means that the creation was supposed to show the greatness—the weight —of God.…
We think we know. God is a stern Rule-Maker who has a bit of an anger management problem. Or, God is the indulgent Daddy in the sky. Or, God used to be a stern Ruler, but he got nice. Christians don't believe any of that. Christians say the one God…
Unfortunately today, baptism seems so… tiny . It’s actually… cute (maybe sweet?) when it’s given to a child. A little baby, a small gathering of people, a little bowl of water, tiny drops sprinkled upon the little baby’s head followed by a small applause and a short prayer. How… small!…
Early on in the history of the church, Christians understood that the 1st century Jewish practice of meeting for prayer at set times of the day was a good and biblical practice to continue. We find references to this in several places in Scripture. In Acts 3 we find Peter…
Editors’ note: For those interested in a review of Richard Hays’s latest book, see here . Richard Hays is a renowned New Testament scholar. The professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School originally studied English literature, giving his reading of Scripture a pronounced literary sensibility. He’s perhaps best known…
As many commentators point out, Genesis is structured by 10 uses of the word toledoth , "generations." The word means something along the lines of "begotten things," and the toledoth statements head the various sections of Genesis. When Genesis 2:4 announces "these are the begettings of heaven and earth" and…
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The narrative of Saul is a superb study in the psychology of envy. Saul becomes enraged at David because of David’s success in fighting his, Saul’s battles. It is utterly irrational envy, as envy always is. Saul’s envy builds to a murderous rage, as he tries twice to kill David.…
A week ago, I posted a series of quotations from James Neill’s Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies . Neill shows that same-sex relations are common among animals and standard practice in many human societies. In what sense, then can we describe same-sex relations, as Paul does…
In his contribution to The Catholicity of the Reformation , Robert Jenson pencils in the contours of the communio ecclesiology that arose within Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism and has become, as he says, “a major achievement of ecumenical consensus” (1). It is a Trinitarian ecclesiology and, in Jenson’s summary, an…
I go back again and again to David Yeago’s seminal article on the “Catholic Luther” in The Catholicity of the Reformation . This time around, this passage on Luther’s early theology of the cross stood out. Yeago argues that Luther’s main question was not, “Where can I find a gracious…
Time was when the wealthy were considered the leisure classes. Nowadays, that’s not so, as the Economist reports: ‘Overall working hours have fallen over the past century. But the rich have begun to work longer hours than the poor. In 1965 men with a college degree, who tend to be…
Some of the most interesting current work being done on early modern English poetry traces connections between the poetry and the religious, especially the liturgical, conflicts of the Reformation and post-Reformation eras. Conflicts over sacraments put the medieval semiotic imagination in question, and fresh conceptions of image and sign shaped…
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