Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Along His journey to Jerusalem, Jesus stops frequently to have meals, three times with Pharisees (7:37-50; 11:37-54; 14:1-35). Meals were central to Jesus’ ministry. He comes “eating and drinking” (Luke 7:34). While His meals are not just for refreshment, they are opportunities for teaching the protocols of the kingdom. Meals…
Time as a realm of participation can be difficult for us imaginatively to grasp. While music is a profoundly temporal art, exploring the medium of time like no other, most of our temporal experience seems decidedly unmusical in character, disjointed and unorchestrated. The form in which we naturally discover time…
John devotes much attention to Jesus’ burial clothes. He tells us that Nicodemus brought about a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes to spice Jesus body, and that He was bound in linen wrappings. We find out that His body and His head were wrapped separately. (John 19:39-40; 20:6-7). When…
Thinking about time in terms of music also helps us to appreciate its unity and inner relations. Henri Bergson observes our cultural habit of dividing time into discrete moments, and conceiving of these as if akin to objects in a spatial succession. [1] Against such a notion, Bergson argues for…
As we attend to these and other aspects of music’s temporality, Begbie suggests, we will find means by which to resist some of our habitual modern ways of conceptualizing time, most especially our tendency to conceive of time as if it were a homogeneous set of technologically quantifiable units laid…
The Hidden Dimension In many fields of scientific study, the apparent complications and contradictions are dispelled once the internal logic is perceived. Biblical hermeneutics is no different, since the author of Creation is the Author of the Word. The Bible’s literary labyrinth radiates organically from an algorithm so simple it…
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I believe I first ran across Victor Zuckerkandl’s name in some of Colin Gunton’s work, and Jeremy Begbie makes significant use of Zuckerkandl in his book on theology and music. I’ve posted on Zuckerkandl before, but having now had a chance to read more of his book, Sound and Symbol…
Exhortation for November 16: We often read Scripture with far too little attention. At times, the stories are so familiar that they just glide past us without our really hearing what is said or read. At other times, the stories are so bizarre that we have a hard time beginning…
Communion meditation for November 16: At one point in our sermon text, Jesus is asked about how many people are being saved, and Jesus immediately begins to speak about doors being closed. It’s clear from what follows that the doors are the doors of a banquet hall, and that Jesus…
I’m not sure that I made my point clear in an earlier post about “justified” in Rom 2:13: I was hinting and gesturing toward the conclusion that “justified” here must include the notion of “rescue,” and not merely a judicial sentence. Because “justified” is structurally opposed to “perish,” it must…
I’m not sure that I made my point clear in an earlier post about “justified” in Rom 2:13: I was hinting and gesturing toward the conclusion that “justified” here must include the notion of “rescue,” and not merely a judicial sentence. Because “justified” is structurally opposed to “perish,” it must…
“Day of wrath” in Romans 2:5: This is universally (so far as I know) taken as a reference to the final day of judgment. But a) is there any other passage in Scripture that uses this phrase to refer to the final judgment? and b) is the final day of…
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