Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Mystical theologians are often unguarded, extreme, un-nuanced, pressing to the edges of heresy, sometimes beyond. Still, the mystics are worthy of study. Why? Many reasons. Unlike some late medieval and post-Reformation dogmaticians, mystical theologians are often instinctively and richly Trinitarian. Historical-critical approaches to Scripture left mystical theologians virtually untouched; mystics…
Portia of Belmont is a “lady richly left,” as Bassanio says of her in the first Act of The Merchant of Venice . Plus, she’s beautiful and wise. Suitors clamber to Belmont in hope. Her father knew it would be so, and in his will set up a fairy-tale test…
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In the nature of the case, “the” Christian meditation on Deuteronomy 14:1-21 cannot be written. Meditation offers too many possibilities, opens too many doors. There is not one and only one correct set of associations for a Christian to consider when thinking of Deuteronomy 14:1-21. We could, for example, consider…
Having retold the story of the cumulative sin of Israel leading to the great atonement on the cross, Paul then reemphasizes that, just as both Jew and Gentiles were locked into sin and judgment, now they are both justified by faith: Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded.…
Deuteronomy 14 is full of allusions to events of Israel’s history and other portions of Scripture. What would an Israelite learn by mediation on these allusions? The answer, I believe, is at least fourfold. Faith, Worship, War For the ancient Israelite first hearing Moses’ sermon, or perhaps hearing it read…
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Time exists, argues Lee Smolin Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe . Space, though - space is secondary, an emergent property, a manifestation of some deeper reality. What might that be? In his NYRB review of Smolin’s book, James Gleick anwers: “For space,…
Before the Federal Vision, there was the Norman Shepherd controversy, which shook Westminster Seminary in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Though repeatedly exonerated, Shepherd was ultimately dismissed for the good of the seminary. It was a convoluted and intensely personal and political battle, and fortunately we now have Ian…
When the Presbyterian General Assembly determined that Catholic baptism was not valid, Charles Hodge was “overwhelmed.” He was sure it was an anomaly, and that most Presbyterians would not believe that Catholics “lived and died unbaptized,” since such a position was “in opposition to all previous practice, and to the…
Yang Jisheng’s Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962 is intended as a monument to members of his family, and to the 30 million others, who died in Mao’s famine. The famine left horrors in its wake: “Some villages transported corpses by the truckload for burial in common graves. In villages…
World War II didn’t end when World War II ended, Keith Lowe shows in his numbing Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II . Instead of concentrating on the European miracle of recovery, he focuses on “the period before such attempts at rehabilitation were even a possibility,…
Ma Jian reports in the NYT today about the inequities and brutalities of China’s self-imposed genocide. Wealthy Chinese circumvent the one-child policy with comparative ease. Not so the poor in the many villages of China: “Village family-planning officers vigilantly chart the menstrual cycle and pelvic-exam results of every woman of…
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