Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Along His journey to Jerusalem, Jesus stops frequently to have meals, three times with Pharisees (7:37-50; 11:37-54; 14:1-35). Meals were central to Jesus’ ministry. He comes “eating and drinking” (Luke 7:34). While His meals are not just for refreshment, they are opportunities for teaching the protocols of the kingdom. Meals…
Time as a realm of participation can be difficult for us imaginatively to grasp. While music is a profoundly temporal art, exploring the medium of time like no other, most of our temporal experience seems decidedly unmusical in character, disjointed and unorchestrated. The form in which we naturally discover time…
John devotes much attention to Jesus’ burial clothes. He tells us that Nicodemus brought about a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes to spice Jesus body, and that He was bound in linen wrappings. We find out that His body and His head were wrapped separately. (John 19:39-40; 20:6-7). When…
Thinking about time in terms of music also helps us to appreciate its unity and inner relations. Henri Bergson observes our cultural habit of dividing time into discrete moments, and conceiving of these as if akin to objects in a spatial succession. [1] Against such a notion, Bergson argues for…
As we attend to these and other aspects of music’s temporality, Begbie suggests, we will find means by which to resist some of our habitual modern ways of conceptualizing time, most especially our tendency to conceive of time as if it were a homogeneous set of technologically quantifiable units laid…
The Hidden Dimension In many fields of scientific study, the apparent complications and contradictions are dispelled once the internal logic is perceived. Biblical hermeneutics is no different, since the author of Creation is the Author of the Word. The Bible’s literary labyrinth radiates organically from an algorithm so simple it…
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In Christ we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him…
Perhaps a history of modern aesthetic sensibilities could be written as a history of water. Consider: The shimmering liquity of some Romantic music (eg, Tchaikovsky), the muted submergence of Debussey, Monet’s obsession with the play of light on water. Or maybe romanticism as inspired by a lunar aesthetics. Or maybe…
Brendan O’Donnell’s Rain from a Rainless Sky (Bright Rock Press, 2006) is a theological meditation on sagebrush. Writing in understated prose as stark as the landscapes where sagebrush thrives, O’Donnell weaves together a biblical theology of trees and weeds, reflections on Gene Robinson and Peter Akinola, and a travelogue of…
The first rule of Adcult, Twitchell says, is “Speech is never free.” For example: “In 1986 the [ Reader’s ] Digest turned town an advertising supplement on heart disease and cigarette smoking prepared by the American Heart Association.” The Digest had never printed cigarette ads, but they turned down the…
In his highly entertaining history of American Advertising ( Adcult USA ) James Twitchell summarizes the dubious contribution of James Vicary to our understanding of subliminal advertising. Vicary claimed that by inserting subliminal messages to “Eat Popcorn” and “Drink Coke,” he had caused movie audiences to increase popcorn consumption by…
During the period of the old covenant, God hid things. He hid some things inside the Most Holy Place, where no one could go. He also hid His plans from his people. He had a secret, which was disclosed, and then only in part, to certain “cognoscenti” - prophets and…
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