Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
(Genesis 37:2 – 50:26) A. Generations of Jacob, 37:2a B. Joseph hated by brothers, 37:2b C. Jacob’s discriminatory blessing, 37:3-4 D. Rule over family: vision, 37:5-11 E. Joseph seeks brothers, 37:12-17 F. Joseph "killed," 37:18-36 G. Judah’s sin, ch. 38 H. Imprisonment, though undeserved, ch. 39-40 I. Famine and Pharaoh,…
Moses and Jesus The gift of the Father is a son, but we must be ready to give our sons back to Him when it is time. The gift of the Brother is an estate, but we must be ready to give our estates back to Him when it is…
An Exposition of Chapter XXV of the Westminster Confession of Faith I. The Catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the…
From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Critics , by David Gress (New York: Free Press, 1998). This book came into my hands after I had finished my series of essays on Western Civilization. It is so good that I was tempted to summarize it in…
In a recent issue of the Chalcedon Report (March, 1999), R. J. Rushdoony praises Patrick Buchanan’s book The Great Betrayal (Boston: Little Brown, 1998), a defense of protectionism. Rushdoony claims that the conflict between free trade and tariffs is a religious conflict, and he is correct. Unfortunately and surprisingly, he…
Joseph and Esther The third patriarch was Joseph, and the third phase of pre-gospel history is the Restoration. We have not spent time looking particularly at the Joseph narrative heretofore, because it is different in cast from the Abraham and Jacob ones. There is no explicit promise, fulfillment, and crisis…
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Umberto Eco ( Limits of Interpretation ) criticizes Barthes’s notion that connotation occurs when “a sign function (Expression plus Content) becomes in turn the expression of a further content.” He argues that “in order to have a connotation, that is, a second meaning of a sign, the whole underlying first…
Isaiah 6:10 says that Isaiah’s ministry will make the hearts of Israel “fat” and their ears “heavy” ( kabad ). The phrasing is unique to Isaiah 6, but the combination of heavy and fat conjures up Eli, who also was going blind. Isaiah 6 is a new Samuel, and like…
MH Abrams notes that at the heart of Romanticism was a transfer of Christian concepts into a new, subjectivist, context: “Much of what distinguishes writers I call ‘Romantic’ derives from the fact that they undertook, whatever their religious creed or lack of creed, to save traditional concepts, schemes, and values…
Frank Lentricchia argues that there is “no unmediated historical knowledge,” and adds: “That is reserved for God, or for theorists like Hirsch who believe that objective knowledge can be acquired in a massive act of dispossessing ourselves of the only route to knowledge that we have: the historicized self. What…
Roger Lundin notes that modern interpretation often seeks an unmediated encounter with the text, and then adds: “Both Keith Thomas and Charles Taylor trace it, in part, to the Reformation’s anti-sacramental impulses, which fed into the desacralizing of nature that seventeenth-century science and commerce eagerly promoted. The process accelerated through…
For centuries, piano virtuosos had thrilled audiences with audacious performances of Liszt’s seventh Etude (in G minor, “Eroica”). Liszt scholars had written analyses of the music, and critics had compared various performances to one another and to what they believed was Liszt’s original intention for the music. An industrious Liszt…
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