Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Why there is more to Jephthah than meets than eye It was not that long ago that I realized the Jephthah-story and the Jesus-story were basically the same story. Sounds crazy, I know. But here is a one-paragraph synopsis of both: The people of God have gone their own way,…
G.K. Chesterton famously said that the Gospels don’t reveal Jesus’ mirth. It’s true we never catch Jesus laughing. But can we believe He never did? I don’t think so. Laughter is human, and Jesus was fully human. Jesus promised that those who mourned would laugh. He mourned; would He not…
Matthew 2 has all the elements of an exodus story. There’s a murderous king, who slaughters Jewish babies. There’s a infant who will be Israel’s future deliverer, saved from the murderous king so He can later return to save His people and lead them to the Promised land. There’s an…
The calendar of Israel was primarily theological, centered on commemorating the salvific acts of God, but also agricultural, celebrating the creation-restoring effects of those salvific acts. The feasts of the first month celebrated the reviving of the world in the Spring, and typified the cutting off of the Savior in…
The chiastic shape corresponds to the shape of human life. This should not surprise us, because we are made in the image of God, and God is manifest in Word and Spirit. If we are living epistles, our lives will look a bit like the literary shape of the books…
Back in January, Venkatesh Rao wrote a fascinating post on the Ribbonfarm blog, discussing different forms of models of narrative. Engaging with Ursula LeGuin’s talk ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’ , Rao explores her contrast between the (male) ‘hero narrative’ and the (female) ‘carrier-bag story’, and suggests a third…
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Kevin M. Schultz's contribution to Faith in the New Millennium is “The Blessings of American Pluralism, and Those Who Rail Against It.” The essay is partly a study of the history of Americans' reconciliation with American pluralism. He starts with Sonya Sotomayor's appoint to the Supreme Court. A Catholic, she…
God speaks and light appear. He separates light and darkness, assigns names to each, and judges the whole to be good. Next day, He’s at it again, speaking, separating, assessing, judging. And so it goes throughout the days of creation: With an insistent, incantatory rhythm, God speaks, sees, names, judges.…
Ezekiel’s initial vision is of the Lord’s chariot-throne, coming with whirling wheels and a sound like thunder, to visit him at the River Chebar. Though the prophet is in exile, the glory of the God of the temple is with him. Robert Jenson ( Ezekiel ) highlights the “incarnational” force…
The Christian school has to function as a fruit of the Christian church. That does not mean it has to be administratively connected to a church. But to be Christian it has to take the church’s ministry as its given starting point. Specifically, I have in mind the sacrament, rite,…
M odern sports are not simple competition between the two teams. If they were only about physical competition, games would be shorter, less glitzy, less energetic. Sports are ritualized events, liturgies. The crowd’s behavior is deliberately intensified with ritual elements – with mascots who emblem the team, with fight songs…
A wonderful quotation from Paul Connerton's How Societies Remember , recently noted by Rod Dreher: “Under the conditions of modernity the celebration of recurrence can never be anything more than a compensatory strategy, because the principle of modernity itself denies the idea of life as a structure of celebrated recurrence.…
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