Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the Bible, all the world is a stage, but like the Tabernacle, that stage moves around a lot. David’s defeat of Goliath can only be fully understood as liturgy fulfilled in history. Liturgy, as a sacrifice of praise, is the step-by-step process of resolving a conflict. It relinquishes all…
Aristotle isn’t fundamentally wrong about friendship, nor is the long tradition that follows him. But you might not gather that by reading some of the more pointed critics of the classical conception of friendship. I think, however, that the classical view is not only viable but taken up and fulfilled…
#13 in Theopolis Papers, Seeking Integration in a Fragmented World It is time for me to “cast off” integration, the way a knitter removes a completed scarf from the needles. I want to bring my quest concerning integration to a decent closure, though my happy quest for reality continues. With…
Below are some notes on a particular sub-theme of Daniel 3, namely the downfall of Babylon’s liturgy. First up, a few words on our text’s literary construction. One of the most conspicuous features of Dan. 3 is its author’s love of lists . Personnel are listed (vs. 2, 3, 27),…
Few things in Scripture, few things in the Christian life, are more familiar than the Lord’s Prayer. Sunday after Sunday, we pray these words together with our brothers and sisters. At home, alone or with our families, we pray this prayer daily, as Jesus taught us (Luke 11:2: “When you…
At the 2019 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, the denominational delegates considered a number of official overtures (requests for action from the regional parts of the denomination) relating to issues of gender and sexuality. The PCA is conservative. As evidence of this, the assembly passed a resolution…
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Sophie Read's Eucharist and the Poetic Imagination in Early Modern England examines six early modern English poets on the assumption that “particularities of belief can be made manifest in the verbal texture of a literary work: that there is an analogy between the rhetorical and theological plans of understanding, and…
Karen Jobes ( 1 Peter ) understates the point when she says that 1 Peter 3 is “more obscure than we might wish,” but she highlights the central point of Peter's odd claim that Jesus preached to spirits in prison: “(1)Being linked with 3:13-17 by hoti kai (because also, 3:18),…
Susan Holman devotes a few pages of her The Hungry Are Dying , a study of “beggars and bishops” in Cappadocia, to a sketch of Rabbinic teaching on almsgiving, drawn from the writings of the Talmudim. The poor appear in three main contexts in rabbinic writing: “First, they are recognized…
English Bibles rarely employ the words “ceremony,” “rite,” or “ritual” to translate biblical terms. The NASB, for example, uses the words “ritual” and “rite” in only three instances, all having to do with the Passover (Exodus 12:25-26; 13:5). The Authorized Version uses the word “ritual” only at Number 9:3. The…
Anthony Carroll summarizes his Protestant Modernity in a 2009 article in the Archives of European Sociology . Recognizing that Weber's theory of secularization “has greatly influenced later social theorists in their accounts of secularisation, rationalisation, and modernisation,” he wanted to set Weber's theory “within its liberal Protestant heritage.” This is…
The ruined city Babylon is a city where things that used to happen don't happen anymore. John's description is under the rubric “no longer” ( ou eti , used 6x in Revelation 18:21-24). In Babylon, music, crafts, milling, light, and weddings have ceased. The old has passed, the new has…
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