Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Not long ago, I heard these statistics about New York City: New York City is in $100 billion in debt. 20% of all NYC residents are on food stamps, which cost $250 million a month. 5% of NYC population are on disability, costing $252 million a month. Other assistance costs…
1. All political power is ambivalent. Vertical violence of “the state” tends to limit horizontal and contested power between people and between tribes. “The State” brings new oppression, but also a measure of new peace and unity. 2. All political formations are ambiguous like this: a strong family conquers weaker…
Gnosticism by any other name would smell the same. But does the church have much of a theological sense of smell, these days, when it comes to the seductions of virtuality in our worshipping communities? Social isolation during a global pandemic makes good public health sense, but whether church should…
It is a remarkable thing, you know, this thing called priority. Just a few weeks ago, religious leaders were boldly asserting in their high-dollar online videos that it was too dangerous to return to worship and that we needed to listen to our political and health leaders. "They are the…
Somewhere in the city of Jerusalem on a rooftop just a few years after the ascension of Jesus and the outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost. . . ". . . and just when are you guys going to live up to your ‘Sons of Thunder’ reputation? Huh? A lot…
In my book, Solomon Says: Directives for Young Men ( Amazon , Kindle ) I mention that Solomon portrays wisdom as a woman. But I don’t ask (or answer!) why he did so. Solomon uses the figure of Lady Wisdom without apology or explanation: Wisdom cries aloud in the street,…
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I have described Descartes’s cogito as modernity’s founding ingratitude, the thought experiment that justified (doubtless against Descartes’s ultimate intentions) countless political, intellectual, and cultural erasures of the past. So also biblical criticism, though the ingratitude takes a specific form here. Insofar as biblical criticism arises from “inner light” sectarians (and…
Each is responsible for all, Dostoevsky says. He didn’t mean that no one was responsible. He meant that responsibility spreads far. In his intriguing Rosenstock-Huessy-inspired Power, Love, and Evil , Wayne Cristaudo illustrates Dostoevsky’s point with a review of the family history of Gary Gilmore. Extreme violence went back several…
John Nolland points out in his commentary on Matthew that the combination “evil and adulterous” is found in the LXX of Hosea 3:1, applied to Gomer. He suggests that by using this phrase, Jesus is echoing Hosea, and implicitly comparing the Jews to the generation of the exile. This makes…
I don’t want to over-dramatize, but I had a taste of the Bush police state this weekend. I crossed the line, and felt the force of the federal government bearing down on me. I tasted totalitarianism. I was dragged into The Castle, playing the role of K. The TSA tried…
Jesus rebukes the scribes and Pharisees for seeking signs, but He promises to give a sign, the sign of Jonah. Two observations: First: Signs are given; signs are gifts. Second, the first time we hear of “giving signs” in the Bible is Deuteronomy 13, which describes Israel’s proper response to…
Jesus condemns the scribes and Pharisees as an “evil and adulterous generation” for demanding a sign. Israel is being conceived, clearly, as a faithless bride; and she is a faithless bride because, in the face of countless signs of Yahweh’s favor to Israel in Jesus, she is still searching for…
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