Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
(continued from previous issue) Between 30 and 50 What did the Levites do between age 30 and 50? Numbers 4 shows us that they carried the house of God on their shoulders. Lifting up the Lord is an image of worship in the Bible, and David’s restructuring of the Levites…
When God created the world, He created two lands: the Throne-land of Eden (entered through the sanctuary-garden, the Garden of Eden), and the Outlying Lands, such as the lands of Havilah and Cush. This essentially bi-polar world is the world of the Old Creation, and it continued to exist until…
Color is inescapable, except for those who are color blind. In our church architecture, we either employ color schemes that are helpful to worship, or we employ color schemes that are not helpful. Of course, this assertion merely begs the question: What color schemes are most helpful. God showed interest…
As I noted in an earlier article in Rite Reasons , the Church Fathers Tertullian, Ambrose, and Augustine all claimed that baptism inducts the baptized person into membership in the royal priesthood of the church, and Thomas Aquinas said that baptism, by imprinting an indelible “character” on the soul, confers…
When the Aaronic priests were ordained, the blood of the ram of "filling” was placed on the lobe of the right ear, the right thumb, and the right big toe (Lev. 8:22-24). Similarly, the cleansing rite for a leper included smearing the right ear lobe, thumb, and big toe with…
In my Preliminary Commentary on Daniel , which many of you have obtained, I argued in chapter 13 that the four monsters called up from the sea by the evangelistic work of the four winds (the saints) represented the deep hatred of God that evangelistic work brings to the fore…
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Julian Young offers a neat summary of the Arthur Schopenhauer (the "first European Buddhist") at the TLS . Schopenhauer's philosophy can be pinpointed by contrast with two better-known thinkers. Against Hegel's fantastic " Bildungsroman , a story of the ever-increasing realization of 'reason' in human affairs," Schopenhauer offered a thoroughgoing,…
"How is it possible," asks Terry Teachout , "that a man who made his conducting debut when Grover Cleveland was president should still be sufficiently well known and revered that most of his recordings remain in print to this day?" Teachout thinks that Harvey Sachs's Toscanini: Musician of Conscience comes…
The first published book of Jorge Luis Borges, the great Argentinian poet and short-story writer, was Fervor de Buenos Aires . Borges later wrote, “ Fervor de Buenos Aires foreshadows everything I would do afterward.” It was a slapdash production, Borges claimed in his autobiography: “The book was actually printed…
John Colmer observes in his study of E.M. Forster that Forster's novels transpose Christian terms into a secular key: "a whole set of religious terms - salvation, grace, conversion, transfiguration - become assimilated into an essentially secular vision. . . . Men now seek their happiness on this earth not…
Richard Florida's 2002 Rise of the Creative Class was a manifesto for urban hipness. As Joseph Bottum sums up the book , Florida argued that "cities thrive when these creative types are allowed to build the creative economy. Their tolerance for alternative lifestyles and their acceptance of unconventional housing broke…
"Medieval tolerance" sounds like an oxymoron. Everyone knows the medievals were in tolerant. Everyone knows that tolerance was invented in the modern world. Everyone who knows such things is wrong. Istvan Bejczy demonstrates in a 1997 essay that medieval thinkers had a well-developed concept of tolerance. He goes further than…
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