Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Stories, frankly all human stories are practically always about one thing aren’t they? Death. The inevitability of death. . . . “There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that happens to man is ever natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must…
Matthew is organized around 5 discourses, which trace out the history of Jesus as a recapitulation of the history of God and Israel in the Old Testament. Jesus first speaks as a new Moses, instructing His disciples on a mountain about a righteousness that surpasses the righteousness of the scribes…
The fall of the Sethites in Genesis 6 is the third fall of mankind, or the third degree of Adam’s original fall. Adam sinned in a Garden against his Father by stealing something he was supposed to wait to obtain. (“Every tree shall be food for you” Genesis 1:29.) Cain…
The recent fantasy film Noah and a slightly related blog comment by my friend Douglas Wilson have stirred up again the question of whether the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 who married the “daughters of men” were fallen angels or the priestly line of Seth. Doug argues for angels,…
The prophecy of Jude concerns apostasy. An illustration of apostasy and its consequences is found in verse 6, which the New American Standard Bible translates this way: "And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for…
At His death, Jesus is surrounded by a Roman centurion and his cohort of Gentile solders. Matthew doesn't say that any disciples are there. But women are, and so is Joseph of Arimathea, identified as a “disciple” but, as John tells us, a “secret disciple for fear of the Jews,”…
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In the introduction to his Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture) , Daniel Boyarin reviews the history of the history of Christianity and Judaism, criticizing the common older view that Christianity is the “daughter” of Judaism. Recent scholars tell a different…
For Clement of Alexandria, not death but martyrdom is the great leveler: “Just as it is noble for a man to die for virtue, for freedom, and for himself, just so is it for woman. For it is not peculiar to the nature of males, but to the nature of…
According to Michael Waldstein’s introduction, the “single main argument” that runs through Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology Of The Body (TOB) is “the teaching of Humanae Vitae about the inseparability of the unitive and procreative meaning of the conjugal act,” and the insistence of that encyclical that…
Joseph is often described as a snotty little upstart, a gossip and tattletale who brings an evil report about his brothers back to his father. I think that misses the whole tone of the story. Joseph is the “foreman” of his brothers (at the age of 17!), a younger son…
I was introduced to the work of Jim Jordan many years ago with his wonderful book “Through New Eyes.” In it, Jordan suggests there is “a real need for books that dig into the Bible and set out the Bible’s own worldview, explaining the Bible’s own language. The Biblical worldview…
Some observations after grading a pile of student papers on the robe motif in the Joseph narratives. 1) Joseph begins the story as a recipient of a robe from his father ; he ends the story bestowing robes on his brothers, especially Benjamin. He has become “father” to his brothers…
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