Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
Many years ago, while perusing Janice Anderson’s revised doctoral dissertation, Matthew’s Narrative Web: Over, and Over, and Over again , I was impressed by her attention to literary structures of repetition within and across Matthew’s Gospel. 1 Her research, in part, nudged me closer toward my present conviction that Matthew…
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
“Like a lily among the thorns, so is my love among the maidens… My beloved is mine and I am his; he pastures among the lilies.” Song 2:2, 16 In chapter two of the Song of Solomon, the Beloved compares his Love to a lily among thorns. The language of…
Introduction From the very beginning, angels and animals have played mediating roles between God and Man. Just as the World was made three-tiered (Heaven, Earth, Deep), so the creatures were made (Angels, Men, Animals). Before Christ came to build the permanent bridge across the chasm between God and Man, various…
Matthew 13, the third major discourse of the apostle’s gospel, is comprised almost entirely of parables. While it may seem that all the parables serve the same purpose in fulfilling the prophet Isaiah (Matthew 13:14), the parables found in verses 44–52, at the very least, function outside that purpose. This…
Showing page 3 of 309
Showing page 19 of 43
Jacob Taubes ( The Political Theology of Paul (Cultural Memory in the Present) ) says that theology departments should install some windows so they can see across the hall and the quad to other departments. He knows the complaint goes both ways: “in Berlin you can just feel it, the…
Me genoito ! Paul says (Galatians 2:17) to the question above. But how does the issue even come up? Why would anyone begin to think Christ is a deacon of sin? The logic becomes clearer (though not crystal) when we take note of the syntax of Galatians 2:15-17. Verse 16…
Things must be used in accord with their nature, argues Karol Wojtyla in Love and Responsibility . Human persons are rational and volitional, and thus “using” them as mere means to an end “does violence to the very essence of the other” (27). But then what of employers trying to…
In an essay in The Interpretation Of Cultures (Basic Books Classics) , Geertz sorts through the problems of defining “man.” He doesn’t want to erase difference in abstract universality, nor fall into relativism. Most attempts to define man he finds unsatisfying: The effort to construct an archetype is only an…
It’s happening. The New York Times reports on the plans of the Conservative Victory Project, a group of what I called “Good Republicans” who want to root out the Bad: “The effort would put a new twist on the Republican-vs.-Republican warfare that has consumed the party’s primary races in recent…
I’ve spent the last few weeks watching the Canadian series Slings & Arrows: The Complete Collection , which ran from 2003-2006. The series centers on the managers and actors at the New Burbage Shakespeare Festival. Erstwhile Hamlet and former asylum resident Geoffrey Tennant (played by Paul Gross) is creative director;…
Showing page 802 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
