Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Summary In what follows, I will consider the “year-stamps” employed in Scripture, i.e., statements of the form, “Such-and-such an event took place in the Xth year of Y.” In the process, I will suggest some ways in which the Biblical narrative might relate to events in the extra-Biblical world, though…
In the first essay on the parable of the Prodigal Son, I suggested that the problems commentators and others encounter in interpreting Jesus three-part parable are not accidental. These are not just problems in our ignorance of cultural background. They are intentional features of the stories —stories designed to poke…
The story of the Prodigal Son is perhaps the most well-known story in the Bible. As others have observed, it may also be one of the most misunderstood. In two short essays, I will point out features of this story that are commonly neglected, aspects of Jesus’ parable that might…
The parable of Lazarus and the nameless rich man is not an independent story. It is part of a long context that begins in Luke 15:1, where Jesus is eating with tax collectors and sinners and the scribes and Pharisees grumble. In response to their hardheartedness, Jesus tells a three-part…
The Bible is written so that even when a reader cannot pick up on what might be deeper or more detailed aspects of a text, there is virtually always a message to be heard. In the ancient world, where the “reader” of Scripture would likely be a church official facing…
The distinction between garden (or vineyard) and field begins in Genesis 2. This relates to the ordering of the formless world. Plants of the field are contrasted with the garden planted by God in Genesis 2:5&8. Later on, under the Old Covenant the Israelites will be required to keep their…
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Desmond suggests that when Hegel defines God as love, he has in mind God as erotic love, and God specifically as needy erotic love: “For Hegel . . . the movement up and the movement down seem not to be two different movements, but two expressions of a singular movement…
In a brilliant chapter of his book on Hegel’s God, William Desmond asks whether Hegel can count to two. He wonders if Hegel is capable of accounting “for the true otherness of creation as temporal and not as eternal?” More, “Let God’s self-movement be eternal, but the self-becoming in time…
In his book on the Trinity in German Thought, Samuel Powell gives a remarkably lucid summary of Hegel’s Trinitarian theology. A few of his major points: 1) Hegel worked out his position as a way between the Enlightenment and pietism, focusing on the question of whether and how we can…
In his book on the Trinity in German Thought, Samuel Powell gives a remarkably lucid summary of Hegel’s Trinitarian theology. A few of his major points: 1) Hegel worked out his position as a way between the Enlightenment and pietism, focusing on the question of whether and how we can…
The news actually broke this summer, when Japanese researcher Shinya Yamanaka announced that he had found a technique to transform cultured mouse skin cells into cells nearly identical to embryonic stem cells. As Nature magazine pointed out, if something similar works in humans, a simple skin biopsy could be used…
In his discussions of gifts, Marion takes both Heidegger and Derrida as interlocutor. In dialogue with Heidegger, he wants to show that the reduction that Heidegger performs does not necessarily reveal Being as the final horizon; he wants to argue that the reduction reveals givenness as the ultimate horizon instead.…
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