Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I grew up in the 1950s. This was before the "Sixties" and the democratization, informalization, and general cheapening of the church and her worship. Ministers were Father Donovan, Pastor Eckhart, Reverend MacPherson, Mister (Episcopal) Parker, and Brother Smith. Liturgical speech was high language, sounding kind of like the King James…
Metaphor exerts a surprisingly powerful influence within our thinking. Although it is easily dismissed as little more than a figure of speech, when we attend more closely to the ways in which we use it, metaphor’s importance swiftly becomes more apparent. Although many of our metaphors have become quite invisible…
What is a tree, scientifically speaking? A mere googling gives the following answer: “a woody perennial plant, typically having a single stem or trunk growing to a considerable height and bearing lateral branches at some distance from the ground.” We can increase detail by describing its family, genus, species and…
The majority of Western evangelical Christians rarely, if ever, fast as a form of spiritual discipline. In our culture, fasting is more connected with dieting than worship, the other side of our deeply ambiguous fascination with food. Food is everywhere. We eat more than ever before, at greater speed, and…
A Grammar of Creation An understanding of the visual-musical language of the Bible must begin with Genesis 1. This is fortunate, because when explaining biblical types to academics, as opposed to children, one is repeatedly forced to start from scratch. From birth, a healthy child is attuned to rhythm and…
In an inverse Eden, a land laid waste, one works alone tending the trash. There are none like him in all the earth, inquisitive, playful and most drawn to those mysterious, dancing bipedal creatures who lost earth and left it to go wandering the vast wilderness of space. Humans have…
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Matthew quotes Isaiah 53:4 to explain how Jesus removes illness and uncleanness (Matthew 8:17). Jesus radiates life, and that life heals the sick and raises the dead. Jesus also accepts death and uncleanness on Himself, to be borne away on the cross. This latter process shows Jesus as temple. Milgrom…
In City of God , Augustine condemns Rome for passing the Voconian law during the period between the second and third Punic war. This “forbade anyone to make a woman, not even an only daughter, an heir.” He adds, “I do not know of any law that could be said…
Peggy Noonan puts it this way in today’s Wall Street Journal online: “Bill Clinton, with his trembly, red faced rage, makes John McCain look young. His divisive and destructive daily comportment—this is a former president of the United States—is a civic embarrassment. It is also an education, and there is…
Augustine points out that the eclipse during Jesus’ death was not a natural occurrence, since Jesus’ death took place at Passover and eclipses normally take place only in the “last quarter of the moon.” So, why did the Lord rearrange the cycles of the heavens for this purpose? The symbolism…
Jim Rogers of Texas A&M writes in response to my earlier post on Bill and Hillary: Re your question: ‘Why run a candidate who immediately alienates a large proportion of the voting population?’ Answer: Because the median voter determines elections. If you alienate 49.99% of the voting population, you still…
Nuttall describes Love’s Labour’s Lost as manifesting an “hysteria of style” like the hysteria of Titus , but with a concentration on a “feast of languages.” The setting for the play is a humanist academy, but one that also follows a medieval rule of renunciation of the flesh in favor…
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