Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Optimism is “an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome.” 1 On the other hand, pessimism is “an inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities or to expect the worst possible outcome.” We can see that optimism and…
If we wish to understand the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we must begin with seeing them as a part of the creational order. Trees, along with plants and seed-bearing things, come to life by the word of God as part of…
“I chant slips and irreversible disasters, wiltings, failures, scars, the little disappointments and the large, blue streaks down a world that wishes it was only suncolors.” Paul J. Pastor from Kintsugi Song I recently lost something very valuable. Something I’d had for years and used every day. But, it wasn’t…
In his eponymous book, Jonah follows an exodus pattern. He travels through the waves and east of the city into the wilderness. On a first reading, it looks like another use of this common literary shape in the Old Testament: salvation through the waters of death and the wilderness of…
“Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” The unknowing master of ceremonies didn’t know how right he was. We see this play out in John’s apocalypse. The end is like the beginning,…
Read in isolation, The Test of Adultery (Num 5:11-31) presents the reader with a seemingly bizarre ritual, conjuring up ideas bordering on the Salem Witch Trials. Beyond this, pressing questions linger—such as, “Why is the woman in particular singled out, while no test is provided for the husband of a…
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I explore some of the astral symbolism of the book of Revelation at the Trinity House site .
Tom Phillips reports in the Telegraph that China is “poised to become not just the world’s number one economy but also its most numerous Christian nation.” According to Purdue’s Fenggang Yang, it will happen in “less than a generation.” Phillips adds, “China’s Protestant community, which had just one million members…
Anthony Gottlieb uses his review of Rebecca Goldstein’s Plato at the Googleplex to speculate on how ancient philosophers might have employed social media and information technology: “The epigrammatic Heraclitus would surely have appreciated the enforced brevity of Twitter. Diogenes the Cynic, who made a spectacle of himself in order to…
One of the burdens of William Easterly’s The Tyranny of Experts is that the state is one of the great obstacles to development. As Howard French summarizes the argument in the NYTBR , “Easterly’s stories unfailingly reinforce a select number of crucial themes, the boldest being that the people of…
The scene in heaven in Revelation 4 is a temple scene. It’s also the beginning of John’s sky journey among the stars and constellations. But the combination of a throne and throne s indicates another setting: This is a courtroom. That’s what thrones indicate elsewhere in Scripture (Psalm 122:5; Daniel…
Jesus has to keys to open and close doors (Revelation 3:7-8). That could be a door of mission, but the next chapter of the book shows an open door. It doesn’t stand between church and world but between heaven and earth (4:1). The door Jesus opens to the church in…
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