Daniel J D Stulac

What is our place in nature? Since the Industrial Revolution, humans have has exercised unprecedented dominance over nature, with consequences that are now catching up with us. Many have pointed to Christianity as a culprit. Yet Christianity actually teaches that our relationship to nature should not be one of contempt or disassociation. Rather, according to ancient church tradition, nature is a book to be read, revealing truths about its creator and ours. At a time when many moderns are unsure of what difference, if any, marks us out from other living beings on our planet, and of what our place in the natural world ought to be, what might nature itself tell us about how to live within it? On this theme:Peter Mommsen asks if humans should live by nature’s laws. Colin Boller interviews farmers successfully shifting to regenerative agriculture. Caroline Moore introduces some of Britain’s amazing moths. Daniel Stulac wonders what the Promised Land means in Saskatchewan. Clare Coffey defends dandelions in lawns. Rhys Laverty reports on man’s battle with the sea at the Alderney breakwater. William Thomas Okie explores the old idea that plants reveal their uses. Greta Gaffin looks at our relationship to wolves, and Saint Francis’s. Norann Voll remembers lambing with her father. Tim Maendel finds peace by hunting. Erik Varden asks if the Christian teaching on chastity is unnatural. David McBride translates “The Leper of Abercuawg,” an old Welsh poem. Maureen Swinger watches meteor showers. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to apply their faith to the challenges we face. Each issue includes in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art.

Tragedy of the Commons invites readers into a fresh exploration of the book of 1 Samuel, which tells the story of Saul, Israel's first monarch and the personification of its chronic sins. Stulac's unique voice combines sensitive exegesis with probing meditations on culture, art, literature, memoir, and Christian spirituality. He cuts deftly through the moralistic reductions of Old Testament stories for which the church too often settles, and in doing so, reveals the life-giving rhetoric of a biblical book aimed squarely at the reader's transformation of mind and heart. "Israel's common tragedy," writes Stulac, "will be solved through a lengthening and a deepening of the tragedy itself. Finding his people up to their eyeballs in sewage, God dives into the polluted abyss, swims to the bottom, and unplugs the pipe below their flailing feet." From Hannah's miracle baby to Saul's suicide, Tragedy helps readers to recognize both their own predilection for idols as well as the surprising ways that 1 Samuel anticipates the gospel of Jesus Christ. "King Saul serves not as a finger-wagging argument for God's disengagement from his people's fate," Stulac claims, "but as the shocking conduit of God's incarnational involvement in their corporate mess."

Tragedy of the Commons invites readers into a fresh exploration of the book of 1 Samuel, which tells the story of Saul, Israel's first monarch and the personification of its chronic sins. Stulac's unique voice combines sensitive exegesis with probing meditations on culture, art, literature, memoir, and Christian spirituality. He cuts deftly through the moralistic reductions of Old Testament stories for which the church too often settles, and in doing so, reveals the life-giving rhetoric of a biblical book aimed squarely at the reader's transformation of mind and heart. "Israel's common tragedy," writes Stulac, "will be solved through a lengthening and a deepening of the tragedy itself. Finding his people up to their eyeballs in sewage, God dives into the polluted abyss, swims to the bottom, and unplugs the pipe below their flailing feet." From Hannah's miracle baby to Saul's suicide, Tragedy helps readers to recognize both their own predilection for idols as well as the surprising ways that 1 Samuel anticipates the gospel of Jesus Christ. "King Saul serves not as a finger-wagging argument for God's disengagement from his people's fate," Stulac claims, "but as the shocking conduit of God's incarnational involvement in their corporate mess."

In this book, Daniel J. D. Stulac brings a canonical-agrarian approach to the Elijah narratives and demonstrates the rhetorical and theological contribution of these texts to the Book of Kings. This unique perspective yields insights into Elijah's iconographical character (1 Kings 17-19), which is contrasted sharply against the Omride dynasty (1 Kings 20-2 Kings 1). It also serves as a template for Elisha's activities in chapters to follow (2 Kings 2-8). Under circumstances that foreshadow the removal of both monarchy and temple, the book's middle third (1 Kings 17-2 Kings 8) proclaims Yhwh's enduring care for Israel's land and people through various portraits of resurrection, even in a world where Israel's sacred institutions have been stripped away. Elijah emerges as the archetypal ancestor of a royal-prophetic remnant with which the reader is encouraged to identify.

"No other book of the Bible is quite so R-rated. No other book is quite so ugly or grotesque. Judges offers its reader not a roster of angelic saints, but an astonishing tempest of brutality, feces, slaughter, assassinations, conspiracy, genocide, child sacrifice, rage, betrayal, mass graves, gang-rape, corpse mutilation, kidnapping, and civil war." Gift of the Grotesque offers readers a series of seven theological essays focused on one of the most confusing and challenging books in the biblical canon. Stulac's captivating style combines sensitive exegesis with broadly accessible meditations on culture, art, music, literature, memoir, theology, and spirituality. Better understood as a companion rather than a biblical commentary, this unusual resource will kickstart the theological imagination of anyone who struggles to understand how the book of Judges points forward to the life and work of Jesus Christ. Dare to follow an experienced biblical scholar into the heart of Israel's theological Dark Age, and you will encounter there the transformative Word of God in ways you do not expect. The prophetic book of Judges, writes Stulac, "wants to gut you like a fish, because on the far side of that unenviable prospect, it wants you alive like you've never lived before."

"No other book of the Bible is quite so R-rated. No other book is quite so ugly or grotesque. Judges offers its reader not a roster of angelic saints, but an astonishing tempest of brutality, feces, slaughter, assassinations, conspiracy, genocide, child sacrifice, rage, betrayal, mass graves, gang-rape, corpse mutilation, kidnapping, and civil war." Gift of the Grotesque offers readers a series of seven theological essays focused on one of the most confusing and challenging books in the biblical canon. Stulac's captivating style combines sensitive exegesis with broadly accessible meditations on culture, art, music, literature, memoir, theology, and spirituality. Better understood as a companion rather than a biblical commentary, this unusual resource will kickstart the theological imagination of anyone who struggles to understand how the book of Judges points forward to the life and work of Jesus Christ. Dare to follow an experienced biblical scholar into the heart of Israel's theological Dark Age, and you will encounter there the transformative Word of God in ways you do not expect. The prophetic book of Judges, writes Stulac, "wants to gut you like a fish, because on the far side of that unenviable prospect, it wants you alive like you've never lived before."

In this book, Daniel J. D. Stulac brings a canonical-agrarian approach to the Elijah narratives and demonstrates the rhetorical and theological contribution of these texts to the Book of Kings. This unique perspective yields insights into Elijah's iconographical character (1 Kings 17-19), which is contrasted sharply against the Omride dynasty (1 Kings 20-2 Kings 1). It also serves as a template for Elisha's activities in chapters to follow (2 Kings 2-8). Under circumstances that foreshadow the removal of both monarchy and temple, the book's middle third (1 Kings 17-2 Kings 8) proclaims Yhwh's enduring care for Israel's land and people through various portraits of resurrection, even in a world where Israel's sacred institutions have been stripped away. Elijah emerges as the archetypal ancestor of a royal-prophetic remnant with which the reader is encouraged to identify.