Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The story of Judges 19 and the subsequent chapters are some of the most shocking and appalling accounts in all of Scripture. The callousness of the old host and the Levite, and the monstrous brutality of the men of Gibeah, leaves us feebly scrabbling for words by which to surmount…
David has become king. He has conquered the capital city of Jerusalem. He has brought the ark of Yahweh into the city and placed it in a tent. He has stationed Levites at the tent to offer sacrifices of praise. An anomaly hits him: He has a cedar-paneled palace, and…
In Part 2 of this series we traced what we have of the development of the epiclesis in the liturgy of the Church. In this third and final part we’ll look at the theological implications of this and how we may apply what we’ve learned. As we saw in Part…
In a 2014 piece published in First Things , I offered a "wish list" for Protestant churches, a checklist for a future catholic Protestantism. The wish list doesn't cover everything. It doesn't mention those things that Protestants, especially Evangelicals, already do, often exceedingly well, things like missions and evangelism and…
In the first part of this series we examined the meaning of “blessing” in Scripture and its parallels in Jewish liturgical tradition, but did not find anything that we could properly call an epiclesis (an invocation of the Holy Spirit). We did find examples of invocation of Jesus to “come”…
When the Aaronic priests were ordained, the blood of the ram of "filling” was placed on the lobe of the right ear, the right thumb, and the right big toe (Lev. 8:22-24). Similarly, the cleansing rite for a leper included smearing the right ear lobe, thumb, and big toe with…
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Scholars have long speculated on the astronomical imagery of Revelation. Astronomy plays a big role in Austin Farrer’s Rebirth of Images , and Bruce Malina has written a couple of books on the subject ( Social Science Commentary on Revelation ; On the Genre and Message of Revelation ). He…
Who are the horsemen riding the white, red, black, and green horses that are summoned when the Lamb breaks the first four seals? (Revelation 6:1-8). Perhaps a grammatical/syntactical observation will help. Nowhere in the Old Testament is anyone said to “sit” on a horse. People “ride” horses, or don’t ride,…
Mary Beard describes Ben Power’s production of Medea “impressive.” But she wonders if the modernized version of the tragedy is Euripides. “Euripides’ play is a complex work, raising difficult issues about gender, sincerity, self-interest and responsibility. But, although Medea ends up killing her sons (with all the terrible conflicts that…
Ernest Simmons’s The Entangled Trinity is an effort to work out the relation of theology and science through Trinitarian theology, and particularly through the concept of perichoresis, which leads into a panentheistic understanding of God’s relation to the world. He uses the metaphor of “complementarity” the quantum idea that what…
In recent years, historians have argued that the state didn’t exist in the medieval period. States are born of war, argues Charles Tilly, especially the wars of the early modern era. Annales scholars and their descendants saw tiny medieval duchies and counties as antitheses to centralized state power. Sverre Bagge…
Marcia Shoop is extraordinarily well-positioned to reflect on the theological dimensions of contemporary sports. A college athlete with a PhD from Emory University, Shoop is married to John Shoop, a former college quarterback who has coached both in the NFL and the NCAA. Shoop’s Touchdowns for Jesus bills itself as…
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