Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
What About Catholics? (continued) Usually, such people are not seeking graven images, but rather their idolatry is of a broader character. They are seeking a home on earth. Scott Hahn’s book is called Rome Sweet Home . This is the essential sin, for there is no home on earth. The…
Reading the earliest Christian apologists is like watching a movie in which the hero has the means to demolish his opponents in his grasp but never realizes it. The apologists come across as men not altogether aware of the radical character of the gospel they defend. In response to charges…
Then [Elisha] went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, ne`arim came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, "Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead!" When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in…
Further Numerical Items of Interest Umberto Cassuto points out some other numerical factors in Genesis 5. 1 For one thing, he observes that every number in Genesis 5 is a multiple of 5, sometimes with the addition of 7. We have, in essence, made this point already. He also points…
Prostration God has designed the human body in a marvelous way, and Biblical religion is very physical. We believe in the resurrection of the body, against all pagan ideas of the immortality of the soul. We bury our bodies, not burning them. Human beings in their totality, including our bodies,…
Since Revelation is laid out in serieses of sevens, it is worth investigating to see if there is a series of seven after the seven libation-bowls of chapter 16. I believe there is, and it is the burden of this essay to expose it. The series of sevens, or heptamerous…
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John records Jesus saying “Amen, Amen” some twenty-five times. It’s typically understood as an oath formula, a “double witness” that stresses the truth of what Jesus says. But there’s an additional dimension. The double Amen appears in the Old Testament only a few times. The people respond to Ezra’s blessing…
Jesus has “life in Myself” (John 5:26). That appears to be an inherent quality. But Jesus doesn’t set inherent and received in opposition: The life that He has in Himself is a gift from His Father. His quality of having-life-in-Himself is given to Him from Another. And when He gives…
Why are the seven letters of Revelation addressed to churches in Asia Minor? Asia Minor isn’t a focus of interest at all in the Old Testament, though much of Paul’s ministry is carried out among diaspora communities and churches there. That only shifts the question: Why is Paul interested in…
Derek Thompson analyzes the “savior fallacy” that drives many NBA teams in the Atlantic . It has several components: Mediocrity is the worst, and mediocre teams stay mediocre, so “tanking” becomes a deliberate strategy; one top draft choice can change a loser into a championship team; so, it’s best to…
Robert Kaplan offers a brief in defense of empire at the Atlantic. “Throughout history,” he argues, “governance and relative safety have most often been provided by empires, Western or Eastern. Anarchy reigned in the interregnums.” Globalization today depends on the infrastructure of the British empire: “as the Harvard historian Niall…
Larry Sidentop’s Inventing the Individual is intellectual history of the old school, the broad-sweep, big-idea type. Jeffrey Collins thinks that for all the dangers the book works ( TLS review). It is “a thoroughly interesting and fundamentally convincing book.” The key development, Siedentop argues, was the “Christian revolution” that gave…
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