Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Place names become fraught with meaning by association with people and events. The name “Wittenberg” calls to mind Luther and the Reformation for Protestants and Catholics alike. Geneva has a wider range of associations, but the Reformation Wall, with its four main statues of William Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza,…
“…a mystery without a solution, a horror story without savagery, a nightmare in which all the watches stop at noonday…” The Bestial Gardens of Men Then they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!” (Luke 23:30) The following lines by Edgar Allan Poe,…
2 Samuel 11-12, which record David’s sin with Bathsheba and its aftermath, is structured chiastically: This arrangement highlights several things about the episode. It reinforces what is obvious from even a casual reading, that the transition in the story occurs with Nathan’s confrontation of David’s sin and David’s confession. Up…
Medieval bestiaries are packed with quaintly inaccurate information about animals, birds, and other created things. Foxes and snakes are devilish critters; stags, pelicans and elephants are Christlike in their various ways. Of course, the medievals picked this up from the Bible, where bestiary observations are fairly common. “Go to the…
What do Reformational Catholicism and craft beer have in common? The question seems to beg for a punchline. Better yet, it would be pretty good clickbait for an article on Katharina von Bora’s “spirited” contribution that helped spark the Protestant Reformation. Well, this is no joke and I am certainly…
Suffering Defined Suffering happens. We witness it all around us and experience it in our lives. It often comes from forces beyond our control. Suffering is inscrutable; it strikes unexpectedly, on a bright summer day or a cold winter night. We lament and are bewildered by suffering. But we are…
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Some years ago, Richard Bauckham wrote superb book on Revelation, The Climax of Prophecy . It contained nine references to John’s gospel. A recent collection of papers in honor of the dean of Johannine studies, Raymond Brown, contained only a handful of references to Revelation, all in a single footnote.…
Drawing on the work of Matthias Klinghardt, Claudio Carvalhaes ( Eucharist and Globalization , 37-8) claims that in the Greco-Roman world the term koinonia had the primary meaning of “meal community.” He adds, “Within the meal communities the values of society were upheld, developed and expanded (e.g., mutuality, joy, modest,…
If you read about a character who visited friends one day and stormed in like a thundercloud the next, who visited unexpectedly and shared a meal but then withdrew into a closed palace, who blew smoke from his nostrils and then spoke with magnificent gentleness and compassion, you’d be inclined…
In his 1844 sermon on Catholic unity , John Williamson Nevin steered carefully around the paradox of a unified church divided by denominations. On the one hand, he insisted that the church’s unity must take outward, visible, social form. As a soul without a body is disfigured, so inward unity…
Nevin ( Catholic Unity ) knows the arguments for denominationalism: “We frequently hear apologies made for the existence of sects in the Church. They are said to be necessary. The freedom and purity of the Church, we are told, can be maintained only in this way. They provoke each other…
Trusting in the Bible’s depictions of the unified church, and hopeful in Christ’s own prayer for the unity of His disciples, Nevin insisted ( Catholic Unity ) that the fragmentation of the church could not possibly be permanent: “Can any one suppose, that the order of things which now prevails…
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