Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The idea of atonement is not a distinctly Christian, or even Hebraic, concept. It also makes an appearance in ancient Greek thought (among other places). The Greek tradition is by no means monolithic, so it isn’t possible to speak of a “Greek” concept of atonement. But there are certain commonalities…
As we know, there are seven deadly or capital sins. Prior to the list of the seven deadly sins there was a list of eight evil thoughts or demons. It was made by an Eastern monk, Evagrius Ponticus. When the list was transposed to the West, one evil thought was…
Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is one of those epistles in Scripture to which pastors and teachers resort to show the church everything that it shouldn’t be . There is, of course, good reason for this. The Corinthian church was filled with all sorts of problems. Personality cults (i.e., factions),…
Today is Ash Wednesday , and as many Christians of the Protestant formerly "low church" persuasion are reacquiring some of the good and ancient practices of the church, one question in particular comes to the front: to ash or not to ash? That is, while many of us are finding…
A murder of tweets. To observe Lent rightly, we have to be persuaded that we already stand in God’s favor. Ash Wednesday reminds us to number our days. It helps us gain a heart of wisdom (Psalm 90:12). We keep Easter to manifest and deepen our prior share in resurrection.…
Dale C. Allison, Jr., The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993). Dale Allison 1993 book is a superb case study in the New Testament's use of the Old. Though he focuses on only a single typology (Christ as a new Moses) in only a single gospel (Matthew), Allison's…
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James Smith’s conclusions regarding Derrida express more clearly than I’ve been able to do my own sense of Derrida. These are scattered quotations from The Fall of Interpretation , pp. 127-129: “Derrida is honest about not challenging for a moment Rousseau’s and Levi-Strauss’s reading of violence; his own analysis is…
James K. A. Smith has a neat scheme for summarizing different view of interpretation in terms of the categories of creation and fall. For some thinkers, interpretation and the possibility of misinterpretation are results of the Fall; for others, interpretation and misinterpretation is inherent in created life, though there is…
Another benefit of Derrida: Because he puts philosophical issues in mythological and metaphorical terms, he moves philosophy into the field of theology. As I’ve pointed out in a number of posts, Derrida (following Plato) speaks of the relationship between speaker and speech (or sometimes between speech and writing) as a…
JP Vernant points out the connection between writing and democratization: “In the kingdoms of the New East, writing was a privilege and specialty of scribes. Writing enabled the royal administration to control the economic and social life of the State by keeping records of it. Its purpose was to constitute…
Well, here’s an interesting coincidence (pointed to by Derrida, still in “Plato’s Pharmacy”): Derrida is discussing the ritual of the pharmakos , which he is connecting to Plato’s various uses of pharmak - words in discussions of knowledge, language, and other issues. The pharmakos rite was a scapegoat ritual, annually…
What is it that makes Derrida so stimulating and fun to read? At least for his treatment of standard philosophical works (I’m reading “Plato’s Pharmacy” in Disseminations ), I think it’s mainly that he shows that philosophy is not about what undergraduate courses in philosophy teach you it is about.…
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