Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Protestant-Catholic relationship has hardly been an untroubled one. And yet, the possibilities for various layers of reconciliation are better then at any time since the original schism 500 years ago. One of the symbols for the church that is used in Scripture is the church as a household (Ephesians…
Despite the layers of wiping, covering, and ransoming during the Day of Recoverings, true unity still has not been achieved. Divorce is still possible; God still might leave his people. Thus the Day of Recoverings must be repeated every year. The perpetual expression of unity between God and man in…
The events of Leviticus 16 are commonly known as “The Day of Atonement,” from the Hebrew phrase yom hakippurim, in Leviticus 23:27. However, it would be more accurate to say, “The Day of Atonements,” [i] since the word is plural. The plurality primarily relates to 16:33, which states five different…
Mary Douglas, against the common notion that primitive religious rituals were illogical and random asserts, “The analysis of ritual symbolism cannot begin until we recognize ritual as an attempt to create and maintain a particular culture … Any culture is a series of structures which comprise social forms, values, cosmology,…
Jesus holds seven stars. They are the angels of the seven churches (Revelation 1:20). For ancient readers and hearers, "seven stars" would evoke a number of associations - the seven planets, the seven stars of Ursa Major, and the seven stars that make up the Pleiades. The last makes a…
When he first arrives in Harran, at Paddan-Aram, the home of Laban his uncle, Jacob sees a well. Wells are mentioned frequently in Genesis. Twice Hagar finds a well in the wilderness (Genesis 16:14; 21:19). Philistines seize Abraham’s well (21:22-34), and Abraham’s chief servant finds a wife for Isaac at…
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The narrative of Saul is a superb study in the psychology of envy. Saul becomes enraged at David because of David’s success in fighting his, Saul’s battles. It is utterly irrational envy, as envy always is. Saul’s envy builds to a murderous rage, as he tries twice to kill David.…
A week ago, I posted a series of quotations from James Neill’s Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies . Neill shows that same-sex relations are common among animals and standard practice in many human societies. In what sense, then can we describe same-sex relations, as Paul does…
In his contribution to The Catholicity of the Reformation , Robert Jenson pencils in the contours of the communio ecclesiology that arose within Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism and has become, as he says, “a major achievement of ecumenical consensus” (1). It is a Trinitarian ecclesiology and, in Jenson’s summary, an…
I go back again and again to David Yeago’s seminal article on the “Catholic Luther” in The Catholicity of the Reformation . This time around, this passage on Luther’s early theology of the cross stood out. Yeago argues that Luther’s main question was not, “Where can I find a gracious…
Time was when the wealthy were considered the leisure classes. Nowadays, that’s not so, as the Economist reports: ‘Overall working hours have fallen over the past century. But the rich have begun to work longer hours than the poor. In 1965 men with a college degree, who tend to be…
Some of the most interesting current work being done on early modern English poetry traces connections between the poetry and the religious, especially the liturgical, conflicts of the Reformation and post-Reformation eras. Conflicts over sacraments put the medieval semiotic imagination in question, and fresh conceptions of image and sign shaped…
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