Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Evangelistic Message to the Uninformed: 1 Timothy 3.14-16 Even though this is written as a sermon for delivery, and even though it was preached in a homiletics class, I decided I can’t post it as a sermon because it was not truly preached at a place where nonchristians wanted to…
If we only read the Gospels of Mark and Luke, we might get the impression that Jesus’ ascension was on resurrection Sunday. Matthew speaks of going to Galilee but he does not put things into a clear time frame. John shows us that Jesus appeared to the disciples eight days…
The most cursory glance at the history of Western literature reveals that it has been deeply influenced by the Bible. Some of the greatest classics of Western literature draw their plots, characters, and ideas largely from Scripture; Dante’s Divine Comedy and Milton’s Paradise Lost are two of the most notable…
Few themes emerge as profoundly and persistently in the streams of biblical narrative as the conflict between light and darkness, and the juxtaposition of humanity with monstrosity. These themes not only weave through the fabric of Scripture, emerging in stories from Genesis to Revelation, but also stitch together the human…
In John Wenham’s work, Easter Enigma , he devotes an entire chapter to Mary Magdalene, which is rephrased and summarized here. 1 One of the interesting things that Wenham said was that Mary Magdalene was the second “most favored woman in the Bible.” 2 He adds, “Yet apart from a…
God made man to live in a larger relational context, and even in high rebellion, man cannot escape his created nature. Instead, that nature takes revenge on rebellious man. Autonomous and alone, the self craves absolution but recognizes no authority that might give it; it thirsts for glory but rejects…
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C atherine Pickstock claims that the rejection of liturgy is central to modernity. Having refused the integrations of liturgy, modernity forges various forms of pseudo-liturgy, pale substitutes to accomplish what the liturgy once did in Western society. One of these pseudo-liturgies is civility: “Once the common ritual basis in which…
D avid Goldman compares “transgressors” Milo Yiannopoulos and Yuja Wang . Milo's transgressiveness is his essence; Wang, a thirty-year-old Chinese pianist, plays the Western repertoire, her transgressiveness evident in her habit of performing in micro-dresses and revealing evening gowns. (Goldman wrote this just before Milo's public humiliation.) Despite her Asian…
P ete Spiliakos makes the counter-intuitive point that Trump's nationalism will fail politically unless it can become more nationalist: Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again' slogan is, paradoxically, insufficiently nationalist. MAGA leaves out African Americans for whom America was not noticeably greater in the past—when, for instance, blacks were prevented from…
1 Chronicles 27:25–31 lists the officials in charge of David's stores and lands. Twelve men are named and each has an area of responsibility: 1. Azmaveth, king's treasuries, v. 25a 2. Jonathan, treasuries in the field, v. 25b 3. Ezri, supervisor of field workers, v. 26 4. Sheim, vineyards, v.…
I n an article on “Liturgy, Art and Politics,” Catherine Pickstock argues that the liturgy holds together universal and particular in a unique way. It does this in part because it “extends the liturgical tension between the ideal and the real to an extreme, and yet still holds the polarities…
I n her meticulous and revealing study of The Eucharist in the Reformation , Lee Palmer Wandel argues that Luther and Zwingli divided at Marburg because their respective positions were incommensurate, incomprehensible each to the other. Specifically, they “divided over the nature of Christ's body,” but that point of division…
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