Alastair Roberts revisits the resurrection stories of the Old Testament.

Jesus expected his followers to know that he was going to have to die and would then be resurrected – but, famously, they didn’t figure it out until it happened. What were Jewish expectations of resurrection, and where is the idea found in the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible?

Alastair discusses the hints and implications found throughout the text, from metaphors which point to Israel’s return from exile as a kind of political resurrection, to more literal expectations of life beyond death.

He then discusses how we are to understand Christ’s resurrected body itself, and therefore ours: Saint Paul says that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” and yet Jesus tells his disciples to notice that he has “flesh and bone.” What is a spiritual body? How did first century Jews think of flesh and spirit? And what can we expect?

Southern Baptist preacher Clarence Jordan (1912-1969) argued that true Christian fellowship as practiced by the early church demands sharing of material possessions, distribution of those goods, and racial equality.

Ross Douthat discusses why what is natural is not a guide to what is good.

The idea that the natural world is to be worshiped can take many forms. Douthat and Peter Mommsen and Susannah Black Roberts discuss these forms, ranging from Wordsworthian spiritual experiences in a national park, to worshiping ancestral or local gods, to civic religions of left and right, to tarot card reading, to affirming the Darwinian struggle for existence as a source of moral guidance.

 They discuss varying understandings of natural law, talk about euthanasia, and revisit Fight Club. Then they discuss whether Darwinism is compatible with the traditional idea of the Fall, and whether we should accept the teaching that human beings are made to not just live in harmony with the natural world but to transcend it.

Heinrich Arnold writes that in the Bruderhof, as in any society, children flourish when family, school, and community align.

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and Alexander Raikin discuss euthanasia and eugenics. What has happened in the law and society in Canada since 2016 such that MAID has exploded, becoming one of the most common causes of death there? What is the relationship of national healthcare to this expansion? Alexander Raikin brings in a review of the statistics over the past decade or so.

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson then discusses the history of the euthanasia movement, beginning in the late nineteenth century with its connection to eugenics, through its fall into disfavor subsequent to its association with Nazism, through its rise again in the 1970s. What are the different kinds of arguments that have been used, and how can we think about those arguments?

Raikin and Thomson then discuss the relationship between voluntary and involuntary euthanasia, and Thomson discusses the particular vulnerability of disabled people to pressure to choose MAID.

Leah Libresco Sargeant writes about Grace Russo and her philosophy of mending clothes with beauty.

Zena Hitz on our time, its value, and how we might spend it if we had more of it.

Stephanie Saldaña writes that though the members of her church have been scattered by war, the church lives on.

Adam Nicolson has been rehabilitating his farm in Sussex for many years now, and he discusses the difficulties and rewards of this, and the piece that he wrote about it for Plough’s issue on repair.

They go on to discuss the topics of some of Nicolson’s books: Sissinghurst, the farm and garden owned by Nicolson’s grandmother, Vita Sackville-West; Homer; the pre-Socratic philosophers; and sailing. 

Norman Wirzba writes that our homes and workplaces should nurture and celebrate life.